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THE OLD COLONY TOWN 
AND OTHER SKETCHES 



BY 



WILLIAM ROOT BLISS 

'r 
author of colonial times on 
buzzard's bay 



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MeMi0}M 


Hitrrr^iDplS^ 







BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1893 



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• Bet 



Copyright, 1893, 
By WILLIAM ROOT BLISS. 

All rig/i/s reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 




CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

^^HE Old Colony Town i 

The Ambit of Buzzard's Bay . • . . . . 35 

Life on Matinicus Rock 63 

Old Roads near Buzzard's Bay • • • 79 

-A Day on the Shore 93 

Old Colony Witch Stories .... loi 
A Thanksgiving 115 

"^Society in the Menagerie . . ... . 125 

The Mind of My Dog 147 

Days on the North Atlantic .... 163 
The Flight of the Albatross . . . .179 
The Last Man on a Wreck .... 191 
Seven Days in a Jinrikisha 203 



THE OLD COLONY TOWN 




THE OLD COLONY TOWN 



Coming up from Buzzard's Bay through 
the woods, I get my first view of the spires 
of Plymouth from the top of a hill. The 
town lies on a sloping plain between the sea 
and a range of pine-covered hills, which, be- 
ginning behind it, extend about thirty miles 
in a southeasterly direction and end on the 
Atlantic Ocean, 

It is easy to discover that the thing which 
the town lacks is a steady harbor ; one that 
will stay at home all day and not go away 
at night. Whenever the tide runs out, the 
harbor runs out also, leaving in its place 
broad, oozy flats which offer good pickings 
to plover, whose flying cry is a startling note 
among the sounds of a summer night. 
Through the ooze wind narrow channels of 
shallow water to the sea. By the deepest of 
these the distance is about eight miles from 
the Gurnet Lights, at the entrance of the 



4 THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

harbor, to Plymouth Rock. If the Rock 
could attract the sea as it attracts sight- 
seers, the Old Colony Town would have a 
respectable harbor, and might call itself the 
pleasantest for situation of any town on the 
coast of Massachusetts. 

Every day in summer a steamboat comes 
from Boston, and pours ashore a multitude 
of men, women, and children, who pass by 
the hackmen in waiting, and rush to the 
Rock. A steamboat made the same voyages 
more than half a century ago ; but it brought 
no pilgrims. Now they constitute a daily 
show, which serves to entertain the loungers 
who are sitting atop of Cole's Hill watching 
the modern pilgrims as they hasten to their 
shrine. They walk around the Rock ; they 
put their hands on it ; they gaze at it ; they 
spell aloud the inscription, "1620;" they 
step across it ; they stand still on it and 
make good resolutions ; and I have seen 
respectable-looking men and women meet 
on it, and kiss each other. 

It is difficult to explain this fetichism, 
which besets not only the multitudes coming 
by sea, but those also who come in railroad 
trains from distant parts of the country. 



THE OLD COLONY TOWN 5 

Plymouth Rock, elevated into the protection 
of iron pickets and gates, sheltered from sun 
and rain by a granite canopy, has become to 
strangers and wayfarers a curiosity as ex- 
traordinary as a mermaid or a flying horse 
would be. 

Looking eastward from the Rock, you see 
a long sand spit stretching out from the 
south shore. It keeps the sea .swells from 
rolling over the harbor when the harbor is 
in. It was once covered with trees ; and a 
town-meeting of the year 1702, considering 
"the grat damage likly to accrew the har- 
bour by cutting down the pine trees at the 
beach," did order " that henceforth Noe pine 
trees shall be felled on forfiture of 5 shil- 
lings pr tree & that Noe man shall set aney 
fire on sd beach on forfiture of 5 shillings 
per time." Now there is not a tree on it. 
People go there for fish dinners and picnics, 
and to set fires for clambakes. A little 
steamboat named " Mary Chilton " carries 
sight-seers to the beach ; an electric car 
named " Mary Chilton " carries them through 
the streets ; and Chiltonville is a little vil- 
lage near by. The Chilton name is an incan- 
tation in the Old Colony Town. 



6 THE OLD COLONY^ TOWN 

I asked a deck-hand, as we were steaming 
to the beach for a dinner, "Who is Mary 
Chilton ? Does she own this steamboat ? " 
He did not know ; he had been aboard only 
two months. I went up to the pilot-house, 
and, leaning into the window, I asked the 
captain : " Who is Mary Chilton ? " He 
gave me a quizzical look. " She was the 
first woman," said he, " that landed on the 
Rock." "Is that true.?" I replied. "Did 
they land on the Rock t The mate of the 
Mayflower was a seaman ; don't you think 
he ran his boat right on the sand } Then 
the passengers jumped out, and he hauled 
her up. Just as you would do it if you had 
pulled a boat to Plymouth Beach. You 
would n't lay her alongside a rock to rub her 
paint off?" The captain looked straight at 
me, and said : " Where did you get your in- 
formation .'' " 

That is a question which should be put 
to all writers who, through the media of 
romance and tradition, have been weaving 
fables into the history of the Old Colony 
Town. 

Up to the year 1741, this famous Rock, 
which is now the magnet of the town, rested 



• THE OLD COLONY TOWN 7 

on the shore unnoticed. It was in the way 
of commerce, and some persons having, as 
the phrase of the time was, " Libertie to 
Whorfe downe into the sea," were about to 
cover it with a wharf. Then Thomas Faunce, 
ninety-four years old, came up from the back 
country and protested, and told the wharf- 
builders that his father told him when he 
was a boy that the Mayflower passengers 
landed on the Rock. The memory of a man 
ninety-four years old is not likely to be cor- 
rect in regard to words spoken when he was 
a boy. Moreover, Faunce's father was not 
a passenger in the Mayflower, and therefore 
he did not tell this story to his son from 
a personal knowledge of the landing. The 
wharf was built ; and the Rock eventually 
became the doorstep of a warehouse. 

During Faunce's lifetime some of the pas- 
sengers by the Mayflower were his towns- 
men ; and some of these were in the shallop 
which came to the shore from Clark's Island 
on the I ith of December, 1620. There were 
no women in that boat, and it is not known 
when any women were landed from the ship. 
The only record of the first landing is in 
these words : " They sounded ye harbor & 



S THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

founde it fitt for shipping, and marched into 
ye land & found diverse cornfeilds & little 
runing brooks, a place fitt for situation ; at 
least it was ye best they could find." From 
what point on the shore the men who were 
prospecting for the colony " marched into ye 
land " is not known. Romance and a vague 
tradition have designated this Rock, the only 
boulder on the shore ; but its remoteness 
from the island seems to forbid the supposi- 
tion that the shallop went so far away from 
its direct course to find a landing place. 

And yet there is some reason for believing 
the story of the Rock. Faunce was born in 
the year 1647. He was therefore ten years 
old when Governor Bradford died, twenty-six 
years old when John Rowland died, thirty-six 
years old when Samuel Fuller died, thirty- 
seven years old when Henry Samson and 
Samuel Eaton died, forty years old when 
John Alden and Elizabeth Tilley died. All 
these persons were passengers in the May- 
flower, and some of them were in the shallop 
when the first landing was made. When 
Faunce related his story, the landing was 
not so ancient an event as to have lost its 
traditionary details ; and he may have told 



THE OLD COLOXY TOWN 9 

what was already known to others, who, feel- 
ing that whether their ancestors landed on a 
rock, or on the beach, was a matter of no 
importance, did not trouble themselves to 
come forth and confirm Faunce's story. 

To get a good view of the Old Colony 
Town and its surroundings, you must go to 
the crown of Burial Hill. Here a charming 
prospect of sea and shore is opened, on a 
sunny day when the tide is full. It embraces 
the whole scene of explorations made by the 
Pilgrims from the time when the Mayflower 
anchored in Cape Cod Harbor until she dis- 
charged her passengers on Plymouth strand. 
Looking eastward, your eyes rest upon the 
glittering expanse of Cape Cod Bay, and you 
may think of the tearful eyes in "new pli- 
moth " when, after a five months' anchorage 
in the harbor, the Mayflower was seen from 
this lookout to spread her sails and slip across 
the bay for England, leaving behind her 
those who were fast bound by a seven years' 
contract with the Adventurers in London. 
There is not a sail in sight, and you may 
imagine yourself to be one of the homesick 
colonists posted on the hill to watch for a 
ship long expected from the English home. 



lo THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

After your eyes get accustomed to the dis- 
tant range, you notice on the eastern horizon 
a patch of gray color. It is the barren, 
sandy highland of Cape Cod, which, when 
the Mayflower arrived, was " compassed about 
to the very sea with oaks, pines, juniper, sas- 
safras, and other sweet wood." Below you 
is the town sloping away to the wharves, 
where three or four schooners are moored. 
To the right the coast trends off in bluffs. 
Opposite these, on the left, Duxbury Beach 
comes down and ends in a promontory which 
holds up the Gurnet Lights. The quaint 
name of this point of land was in old times 
" the gurnetts nose ; " and if you should 
sketch the facial features of the shore in 
continuation from it, Elisha's Point, with the 
bluffs of Manomet Hill, would form the lip 
and chin, and the channel above would be 
the open mouth of Plymouth. The nose 
was covered with trees when Englishmen 
saw it in 1620. A description of lot bounda- 
ries, written seventy-five years later, men- 
tions the names of trees growing there : wal- 
nuts, poplars, cedars, and hornbeam, which 
was a hard wood used for the keels of ships. 
A town meeting in 1630 ordered that the 



THE OLD COLONY TOWN ii 

trees of " gurnetts nose bee Reserved for the 
use of a minnester onely John Smith the 
boates man att Plymouth hath libertie this 
yeare to fech what he needeth." What John 
Smith had done to entitle him to free fire- 
wood does not appear. But the " minnester " 
was the famous Roger Williams, unto whom 
the town gave "for this year" sixty pounds 
to live on, besides the trees. 

Leaving these things out of mind, look at 
the tortuous channels of the harbor as the 
tide is running out, and you may wonder 
how it happened that a boat from the May- 
flower, carrying " lo of their principall men 
and some sea men," got safely into the har- 
bor during a northeast gale, and found way 
to an anchorage "under ye lee of a smalle 
iland," when "it was very darke and rained 
sore." The island was at that time thickly 
wooded ; afterwards it became a valuable 
part of the town's assets, rented for the mak- 
ing of salt, for a sheep pasture, or for a fish- 
ing station ; the tenants being forbidden to 
carry off any wood " except to keep fier in 
theire boates." When in the year 1688 the 
officers of Sir Edmund Andros announced 
that conveyances of land made by the In- 



12 THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

dians were worth no more than the scratch 
of a bear's paw; and they required the select- 
men to appear before him " to make out 
their title " to the island, the Old Colony 
Town resisted Andros, and by the cost of so 
doing was compelled " to make saile " of it. 

The island is in plain view from Burial 
Hill. As an old surveyor said, it is "bearing 
from the meeting-house in Plymouth north 
by northeast about three miles." It is enti- 
tled to fame because upon it New England 
history began, Saturday night, December the 
ninth, in the year 1620. The frightened 
men aboard the shallop, says William Brad- 
ford, who was one of them, "knew not this 
to be an iland till morning." However, he 
says, they " got ashore & with much adoe got 
fire, all things being so wett ;" then, "after 
midnight ye wind shifted to the northwest & 
it frose hard." 

" And this being the last day of ye weeke," 
says the narrative, "they prepared ther to 
keepeye Sabath," on the island ; thus laying 
the corner-stone in a foundation on which 
New England was to be built. For "a great 
hope & inward zeall they had of laying some 
good foundation, though they should be but 



THE OLD COLONY TOWN 13 

even as stepping-stones unto others." Ora- 
tors who are apt to say, after dinner, that 
these men "builded wiser than they knew," 
do not seem to be aware that they did not 
build at all. They attempted to lay a foun- 
dation only, and upon this their posterity con- 
structed what now exists. 

The oldest date cut in any stone on the 
hill is 1 68 1. It marks the grave of Edward 
Gray, who was in his time the richest mer- 
chant of the colony. His name was fre- 
quently written in the town records, in 
which for once only was he called " Good- 
man Gray." The amount of his town tax 
indicates that his trading transactions were 
large, the tax being " for six score pound " 
in profits, while no other trader was taxed in 
the same year for more than ten pounds ; 
and James Cole, the innkeeper, whose daily 
business would naturally be more active than 
that of a trader, was taxed for eighty pounds. 
The warehouse of this foremost merchant 
was situated "att Rockey Nooke by the 
water-syde." The name only is there to-day. 
In the year 1670 he was the owner of three 
of the seven fishing-smacks then hailing from 
Plymouth. Successful as he was, he could 



14 THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

not write his own name ; a deficiency which 
he shared with many prominent men and wo- 
men in New England. Nathaniel Morton, 
Secretary of the Colony Court, could write, 
but his four married daughters could not, nor 
could the wife of Governor Bradford, The 
education of women was not regarded with 
universal favor in the Old Colony Town. 
Mr. Davis, in his " Ancient Landmarks of 
Plymouth," says that in the year 1793 a pro- 
ject to establish a school for girls was op- 
posed because it might teach wives how to 
correct their husbands' errors in spelling. 
The schoolmaster was never abroad in Colo- 
nial New England. Records written by town 
officers and accounts written in private fami- 
lies are miserably illiterate, and are the evi- 
dences of a very meagre instruction given to 
children in common schools. Up to the be- 
ginning of this century these schools, judged 
by their results, were a disgrace to civiliza- 
tion.i 

1 If by any chance the Braintree village school of even a 
period so late as 1790 could for a single fortnight have 
been brought back to the Quincy of 1S90, parents would 
in horror and astonishment have kept their children at 
home until a town meeting, called at the shortest possible 
legal notice, could be held ; and this meeting would proba- 



THE OLD COLO XV TOIVX 15 

John Rowland, of whom the Colony re- 
cords say " He was the last man that was 
left of those that came over in the ship called 
the Mayflower," lived near Edward Gray at 
Rockey Nooke, and is supposed to have been 
buried in the hill. No one knows where he 
was buried. The inscription on the stone set 
up to his memory by a far-away descendant 
is a curious example of the untrustworthy 
nature of tradition. It says, on the authority 
of tradition, that he married the daughter 
of Governor Carv^er. The discovery of Brad- 
ford's manuscript history of " Plimouth 
Plantation," which in the year 1855 was 
found in the library of the Bishop of Lon- 
don, disclosed the fact that the tradition and 
the inscription on the stone were not true. 
" John Rowland married the daughter of 
John Tillie, Elizabeth, and have 10 children 
now all living," wrote Bradford in the year 
1650. 

It is not probable that any of the May- 
flower passengers were buried in this hill. 

bly have culminated in a riot, in the course of which school- 
house as well as school would have been summarily abated 
as a disgrace and a nuisance. — Three Episodes of Massa- 
chusetts History, by Charles Francis Adams, p. 782. 



1 6 THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

In John Rowland's time, and long before, it 
was the custom to bury the dead in the lands 
belonging to their homestead, where the 
burial was done with no ceremony of any 
kind ; earth to earth, without even a prayer. 
The custom of burying in the homestead 
land still exists in New England. Many of 
the Mayflower company who died within the 
colony were probably buried in their own 
farms, and for this reason their graves are 
now unknown. Where were the forty-four 
buried who died in the winter of 1621, when 
there were no farms in Plymouth .-' The si- 
lence of the records on this subject is remark- 
able. 

As the " common house " in which the 
colonists worshiped stood, until the year 
1637, ^t the foot of Cole's Hill, this hill be- 
came the churchyard, according to a custom 
of Old England. The Pilgrims were not, 
like the Puritans, hostile to English customs. 
Their life in Holland weaned them from the 
English church, but it did not nurture in 
them that hatred of England which was 
shown by the Puritans of the Massachusetts 
Bay Colony, who, as Mr. Palfrey says, " had 
grown to be of one mind respecting the duty 



THE OLD COLONY TOWN 17 

of rejecting the whole constitution of the 
English establishment." Four skeletons 
which were exhumed from this hill in the 
year 1854, and are now lying in the chamber 
of the granite canopy that stands over the 
Rock, were certified by Dr. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes to be the skeletons of Caucasians. 
This discovery supports the theory that Cole's 
Hill was the first burying place of the colo- 
nists. It has been said that graves on the 
hill were leveled and sown with grain to con- 
ceal from Indians the losses of the colony. 
The tender sentiment of this poetic and oft- 
repeated statement is dispelled by the fact 
that the neighboring Indians were friendly ; 
and if they desired to know, it was easy to 
ascertain what the losses had been by count- 
ing the heads of the survivors. 

In the year 1637, a house for religious 
worship was built at the foot of Burial Hill. 
After that date this hill became the church- 
yard ; but the first recorded mention of it as 
a place of graves is in the diary of Judge 
Sewall, when he was holding court at Ply- 
mouth in March, 1698 : " I walk out in the 
morn to see the mill, then turn up to the 
graves, come down to the meeting-house and 



1 8 THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

seeing the door partly open went in." The 
fact that there are but five stones on the hill 
dated before the year 1700 is conclusive that 
many of the dead were buried in the lands 
on which they had lived ; and the recent dis- 
covery of the graves of Myles Standish and 
his daughter Lora, in Duxbury, confirms this 
conclusion. 

Get into an electric car on its run through 
Main Street to Kingston, and it will carry 
you to Pilgrim Hall, a plain granite building 
which was erected many years ago, " in grate- 
ful remembrance of our ancestors who exiled 
themselves from their native country for the 
sake of religion," as a plate in its corner- 
stone says. 

Although this museum contains many arti- 
cles whose antiquity and associations make 
them interesting to an intelligent visitor, it is 
not irreverent to say that some of the things 
enshrined therein remind me of the contents 
of a curiosity shop, wherein are to be found 
the odds and ends gathered from various 
garrets. A museum established "in grate- 
ful remembrance of our ancestors" should 
not be a receptacle of rubbish. Rubbish is 
anything in the wrong place. Many things 



THE OLD COLONY TOWN 19 

which (like the human skulls and bones from 
Florida exhibited in this Hall) may be of 
great interest elsewhere are out of place in a 
museum whose principal claim to exist is that 
it represents the life and times of the first 
colonists of Plymouth. Here are, for exam- 
ple, Malay daggers, Algerine pistols, Chinese 
coins. South Sea shells, and a spoke from a 
wheel of John Hancock's carriage. Here is 
" a pair of spectacles which belonged to Cap- 
tain Benjamin Church," through which that 
gallant soldier may have looked on King 
Philip, whom he slew ; and here is an empty 
pocket-book labeled " which always belonged 
to the Church family," from which the visitor 
may conclude that the family is now extinct. 
Here are the dirk-knife, musket, and pistol 
of one John Thompson. Here is the sword 
of " Perigrine White's grandson," also a hay- 
fork from Bunker Hill, and the remnant of 
a hoe which was dug from the cellar of the 
Old Colony trading-house on Manomet River. 
The human feeling which refuses to forget 
the past is easily led astray in its estimate of 
the value of relics. 

A needle-worked sampler embroidered by 
Miss Lora Standish is interesting evidence of 



20 THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

a delicate industry in her father's house. A 
personal interest attaches to a sword which 
belonged to Myles Standish, and to an iron 
pot in which his succotash was probably 
cooked ; to a dressing-case and cane which 
belonged to William White, suggesting that 
he may have been the Beau Brummel of the 
colony ; to a gourd-shell which belonged to 
George Soule ; to a silver canteen and sev- 
eral pewter platters which belonged to Ed- 
ward Win slow ; to a Bible owned by Isaac 
Allerton, and another owned by John Alden. 
These are interesting relics because their 
owners were passengers in the Mayflower. 

Two large arm-chairs on exhibition are 
said to have been imported by William Brew- 
ster and John Carver. A writer in the 
"North American Review" of September, 
1817, speaks of " sitting in Governor Carver's 
arm-chair in the barber's shop at Plymouth." 
From this ignoble place the chair has been 
elevated to a glass case in Pilgrim Hall. But 
its life in the barber's shop causes me to 
doubt its pedigree. Mayflower arm-chairs 
are so numerous in New England that the 
ship has been spoken of as having been 
employed in the arm-chair trade. The Old 



THE OLD COLONY TOWN 2i 

Colony Records contain inventories, begin- 
ning in the year 1633, of all property brought 
to Plymouth by passengers from over the sea, 
including house furniture, wearing apparel, 
and tilling utensils. They reveal the fact that 
much of the reputed cargo of the Mayflower 
was imported many years after her arrival. 
Previous to the year 1660 there was no arti- 
cle of china ware in the colony. Neverthe- 
less I have seen a teapot, sold by auc- 
tion, which was described as brought from 
Holland by Elder Brewster ; and in Pil- 
grim Hall I saw a "china teapot," labeled, 
"which belonged to one William Foord who 
was the son of Widow Foord which came over 
in the ship Fortune." This ship arrived at 
Plymouth in the year 1621. The widow " was 
delivered of a sonne the first night shee 
landed," as Edward Winslow wrote ; and 
Russell's " Memorial " states that the teapot 
belonged to the widow. But it is certain that 
neither Elder Brewster nor Widow Foord 
had a china teapot. 

In a list of stores necessary for a voyage 
from England to the Plymouth Colony, beer 
and spirits are mentioned, but no tea. " For 
hot waters, Anni-seed water is the best,'' 



2 2 THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

wrote Winslow to those intending to come. 
Tea is first mentioned in the English lan- 
guage by Samuel Pepys, who wrote in his 
diary, September 25, 1660: "I did send for 
a cup of tee (a china drink) of which I never 
had drunk before." Four years later, the 
East India Company gave to the King as 
"raretys 2 lb. 2 oz. of thea." Then its value 
in England was from six to ten pounds ster- 
ling for a pound's weight. There could have 
been no tea in Plymouth until long after 
that date. 

In those times stools were in general use, 
and an arm-chair was a luxury. The num- 
ber of arm-chairs in the inventories up to 
the year 1650 is smaller than the number 
claimed to have been in the Mayflower's 
freight. There is a chair which is said to 
have been brought over by Edward Winslow 
and to have been screwed to the floor of the 
Mayflower's cabin, and another which is said 
to have been brought over by William Brad- 
ford, and another by Richard Warren in the 
same ship. None of these chairs are ele- 
gant specimens of cabinet work when com- 
pared with arm-chairs now in use. The im- 
porters were poor men : — 



THE OLD COLONY TOWN 23 

" Full humble were their meals, 
Their dainties very few ; 
'T was only ground-nuts, clams, or eels, 
When these old chairs were new." 

These lines recall a complaint made by 
the colonists about their larder. It is re- 
corded that in the spring of 1623 they had a 
famine. The record of it says : " All ther 
victails were spente, and at night not many 
times knowing wher to have a bitt of any- 
thing ye next day." The same record says 
it was "bass and such like fish" that they 
had to eat; also "shelfish, which at low 
water they digged out of ye sands." They 
also had " ground nuts and foule," and they 
"gott now & then a dear." 

All the while before the town lay a fish- 
full sea ; wild fowl flocked to the shores ; 
shellfish of all kinds abounded in banks and 
shoals daily uncovered by the tides ; par- 
tridges and turkeys were to be trapped in 
the surrounding woods ; and alewives came 
up from the South Sea, as they come now, 
to leave their spawn in the numerous ponds 
within the colony limits. And yet there 
was a famine; and so severe was it that 
Elder Brewster "hved for many months 



24 THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

together without bread and frequently on 
fish alone." 

The narrative of this peculiar famine 
shows that the colonists did not know that 
their best heritage was the sea. Indeed, 
" fish alone " is the only thing now remain- 
ing to the Old Colony Town which belonged 
to the time of the Mayflower people. Its 
picturesque streets, electric lights, baseball 
men, and tennis girls belong to the life of its 
present day. But the delicious mackerel, 
bass, lobsters, and bivalves to be found in 
its neighboring sea, have come to us from 
the past. When Horace Walpole saw in 
imagination the ruins of the old East India 
House, he said : "■ This is Leadenhall Street, 
and this broken column was a part of the 
palace of a company of merchants who were 
sovereigns of Bengal." When I go out 
with "the boates man att Plymouth," I say : 
" This is Cape Cod Bay, and this bay with 
its * bass and such like fish ' is a heritage 
left to me by a company of pilgrims who 
were sovereigns of these shores." 

Let us return to the museum. There is a 
skeleton in it of one of the first and best 
friends of the colonists. When the May- 



THE OLD COLONY TOWN 25 

flower arrived he was sachem of Cummaquid, 
the country bordering on what is now Vine- 
yard Sound, then called the South Sea. He 
was buried in his own lands, and a large cop- 
per kettle which he got from the wreck of a 
ship was placed over his head, according to 
his request. A recent owner of the land 
dug up the sachem's bones, his copper ket- 
tle, axe, and stone pestle, and sent them to 
Pilgrim Hall. There you may see his pol- 
ished ribs, skull, and teeth, cushioned in a 
glass case, representing a barbaric taste of 
the nineteenth century ; and you ask your- 
self, Why are not the four Caucasian skele- 
tons that were exhumed from Cole's Hill, 
and are now hidden in the canopy over the 
Rock, treated with similar distinction ? 

The most remarkable relic of Pilgrim 
times which the museum contains, is the 
frame of a sea-going vessel whose wreck was 
an important event in the early history of 
the colony. It is what remains of the sloop 
Sparrowhawk, of about seventy tons, which, 
in the year 1626, sailed from England "with 
many passengers in her and sundrie goods 
bound for Virginia," and was cast away on 
the sea-coast of the Old Colony, " They 



26 THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

had lost themselves at sea," as the record 
says, " either by ye insufTficiencie of ye mais- 
ter, or his ilnes, for he was sick & lame of 
ye scurvie so that he could but lye in ye 
cabin dore and give direction ; or else ye 
fear and unrulines of ye passengers were 
such as they made them stear a course be- 
tweene ye southwest & ye norwest, that they 
might fall with some land, what soever it 
was they cared not. For they had been 6 
weeks at sea, and had no water, nor beere, 
nor any woode left." And so the ship ran 
before a gale, stumbling over the shoals of 
Cape Cod, and was driven across a sand bar 
into a blind harbor, "and ran on a drie flat." 
The shipwrecked people heard some of the 
Indians speak English, and by them a letter 
and two of their men were sent to Governor 
Bradford, who visited the wreck, and brought 
its passengers and goods to Plymouth. The 
sands of the sea covered the wreck. In the 
course of time the Nauset Meadows were 
formed over it. Therein it lay buried until 
the sea came up and uncovered it. Its oak 
frame was dug out of the bed in which it had 
lain nearly two hundred and forty years, and 
now it is standing on its keel in Pilgrim 
Hall. 



THE OLD COLONY TOIVN 27 

The passengers by the Sparrowhawk were 
taken into the Plymouth huts, and cared for 
until it was found that they were a bad lot ; 
then they were packed off to Virginia, there 
being, as Governor Bradford wrote, " many 
untoward people amongst them." The emi- 
grants by the Mayflower may be described 
by the same words. That ship brought a 
miscellaneous company of good, bad, and 
indifferent people. The good were in the 
minority ; but they possessed the strength 
of their convictions, and were able, by their 
skill in government, to hold in check the 
turbulent elements with which they were 
accidentally associated. Of these immi- 
grants Mr. Palfrey, in his '* History of New 
England," says : " Eleven are favorably 
known. The rest are either known unfavor- 
ably, or else only by name." If you desire 
to boast that you are descended from the 
Pilgrim Fathers, be sure that your ancestor 
was one of the eleven. 

When we think of Plymouth of the past, 
of which no relic remains except its town 
records, a curious picture presents itself. 
Let us imagine ourselves to be there in the 



28 THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

early part of the last century. What do we 
see ? A small number of plain English fami- 
lies, each of which includes many children, 
scattered over a broad territory whose focus 
is a little straggling village that looks to- 
wards the sun-rising. In the harbor three 
or four fishing smacks are at anchor. A 
sloop is having her bottom covered with tar 
as she lies on beam-ends at the " perpetual 
landing place," which was laid out "for ye 
landing of wood and hay and for laying ves- 
sels on shore upon any occation needful." 
Some men in small boats are to be seen 
sounding over the flats, for there is much 
talk in the village about a " Tryall for the 
making of some beds of oysters." At Rick- 
ard's wharf is the sloop Prosperity taking in 
turpentine and horses. Her bill of lading 
may be called a divine service ; for it de- 
clares that the cargo is " Shipped by the 
Grace of God," that the captain is " Master 
under God," that the sloop is " by God's 
Grace bound for Barbados ; " and it ends 
with this prayer: "And so God send the 
good Ship to her desired Port in Safety. 
Amen." 

The town's territory stretches from the 



THE OLD COLONY TOWN 29 

harbor southward for nearly twenty miles, 
and is covered by a forest. There are many 
tilled fields, near ponds, in the forest clear- 
ings ; there are cart-paths and walk-ways 
which cross streams at "the fording place " 
and at "the stepping stones." The farmers 
occupy unfinished and scantily furnished 
houses ; they wear homespun clothes which 
pass from father to son, and the fashion of 
them is never changed. They " milk ye pine 
trees " to make turpentine and tar, which are 
bartered to be shipped to foreign parts, 
yielding more profit to the yeomen than do 
their tilling lands. They are generally illit- 
erate and parsimonious ; they drink deep of 
alcoholic liquors ; they disapprove of schools 
because a school costs money ; they approve 
of preaching, and agree " to keepe Contrebu- 
tion afoot in the Congregation " to maintain 
it, because it is a means of salvation ; they 
believe that babes must be baptized in order 
to escape from a hell of fire and brimstone, 
and they are as religious on Sunday as the 
Colony laws require them to be. It is no 
Arcadian life that these people lead. Their 
habits are simple, but coarse ; and so im- 
moral is the relation of sexes that illesfiti- 



30 THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

mate children are numerous ; and confessions 
of " the sin of fornication before marriage " 
are made in public assemblies of the church.^ 
One day there comes a stirring and a 
buzzing in the village. It is not considered 
proper for Doctor Le Baron to practice any- 
longer the obstetric art ; and the selectmen 
have summoned the women of the town to 
assemble at the meeting-house and elect 
from themselves four midwives. These wives 
are persons of much importance, whose 
services are in frequent demand. They rule 
the birth-house for the time being, and on 
the first Sunday after birth they carry the 
babe to the meeting-house and present it to 
the minister for baptism, however cold and 
stormy the day may be. The " child shrank 

1 I think it not unsafe to assert that during the eight- 
eenth century the inhabitants of New England did not 
enjoy a high reputation for sexual morality. Lord Dart- 
mouth, for instance, who, as Secretary for the colonies, had 
charge of American affairs, in one of his conversations 
with Governor Hutchinson, referred to the commonness of 
illegitimate offspring "among the young people of New 
England," as a thing of accepted notoriety ; nor did Hutch- 
inson, than whom no one was better informed on all mat- 
ters relating to New England, controvert the proposition. 
— Some Phases of Sexual AIo7-ality and Church Discipline 
in New England. By Charles Francis Adams, p. 24. 



THE OLD COLONY TOWN 3 1 

at the water but cried not," wrote Judge 
Sewall, when his son Stephen, four days old, 
received what proved to be the seal of death 
by baptism on a February Sunday in a cold 
meeting-house. 

Then Ephraim Morton barters his negro, 
described as " being a perpetuall slave whose 
name is Toney," for Joseph Bartlett's negro, 
" a certain youth named Nedd," and three 
pounds to boot. The townsfolk are not fond 
of " colored people." Those who own seats 
in the meeting-house, next to the seats as- 
signed to Indians and negroes, have given 
three pounds to the selectmen to pay for 
moving these objectionable worshipers to a 
place where they can " sett in Elsewhere." 

A town meeting interests every townsman 
if the weather is fair. It has been adjourned 
because of a stormy day ; also, as the town 
clerk said, " because few people did apeare by 
Reason Maney wer at see & others through 
unavoidable ocasions were hendred." Once 
it was adjourned because an obstinate quar- 
rel broke out on the question of establishing 
a school by taxation. There were no free 
schools. " Every scollar that Corns to wrigh 
or syfer or to lern latten shall pay 3 pence pr 



32 THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

weke if to Read only then to pay 3 half pence 
per weke," says the town record of July 
31st, 1699. At these meetings a representa- 
tive to the Great and General Court at Bos- 
ton is elected ; sometimes, as the town clerk 
of the year 1720 testifies, " by a very Eunan- 
omos voat." It is evident that there were no 
spelling bees in the Old Colony Town ; and 
Dryden's lines may be quoted as a descrip- 
tion of the general illiterate state of its 
rulers : — 

" When what small Knowledge was, in them did dwell, 
And he a god, who could but read or spell." 

The town meeting fixes the minister's 
salary and votes to put " two Casements" in 
the meeting-house behind the pulpit "to let 
in aree into ye house ; " and this is done with- 
out thinking of the discomfort which the in- 
blowing air will cause to the bald-headed 
preacher. It orders Thomas Phillips to build 
a gallery and " seat it with Town-born chil- 
dren " only, which means "no niggers." It 
orders all " sheepe keept in A General f flock," 
and that "Noe sv/ine of aney age or sort 
What soe Ever shall Run on the Comons." 
It votes that Elazer Dunham shall be paid 
forty shillings out of the town treasury " to 



THE OLD COLONY TOWN 2>Z 

get him a greate coat." It gives notice that 
a homespun " Wastcoat " having nineteen 
pewter buttons on it has been "taken up" 
on the king's highway. It listens to a com- 
plaint from " Divers people yt they sufered 
Wrong by the 111 grinding their corn by a 
child That had not Descresion ; " and it ap- 
points a committee "To Inform Capt Church 
That they Will not allow of that lad to be ye 
Towns miller." They want their corn to be 
ground by a man. These are small things to 
engage the minds of British legislators. But 
attention to small things is characteristic 
of the people. In their narrow and circum- 
scribed life there are no large things to be 
dealt with. 

Every evening the "saxton" rings "ye 
9 o'clock bell," in the turret of the meeting- 
house. Then taverns are closed, fires are 
covered, candles are extinguished, and the 
Old Colony Town creeps into its feather beds. 
The stillness of night is disturbed by the 
howls of a wolf in the neighboring forest, 
which causes all the village dogs to bark. A 
watchman's rattle is heard, and a flame of 
fire may be seen leaping from a thatched 
roof. Every house has a ladder fixed to it, 



34 THE OLD COLONY TOWN 

and two barrels of water near it ; but no one 
knows exactly what to do, and the house is 
burned down rapidly. 

Does anybody get up early next day with 
an expectation that the dreary monotony of 
colonial life is to be broken by a sunrise ? 
Those inhabitants who have cattle to be fed, 
or fish to be caught on the early tide, are up 
betimes the morn. But the plodding mer- 
chant, who is waiting for his only cargo of 
sugar and rum from the West Indies, knows 
that his sloop cannot enter the harbor during 
the night, because there is no lighthouse on 
the Gurnets ; and the shrewd trader who 
"keeps store" knows that customers can 
wait ; and the tired housewife says that her 
pewter dishes need no scouring to-day ; that 
the spinning wheels can be started later on. 
Everybody has time to spare in the Old 
Colony Town. 




THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 




THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY. 



Standing on the highlands of Agawame 
Neck, I can descry the ambit of the bay as 
far away as the islands which are looming on 
the southern horizon. As I look on the en- 
chanting prospect, I want to change one 
word in these lines from " The Ranger," and 
say : — 

" Nowhere, fairer, sweeter, rarer, 
Does the golden-locked fruit-bearer 
Through his painted woodlands stray. 
Than where hillside oaks and beeches 
Overlook the long, blue reaches, 
Silver coves and pebbled beaches. 
And green isles of Buzzard's Bay." 

You may recall the words of Bartholomew 
Gosnold, who described it, nearly three hun- 
dred years ago, as the ** finest sound " he 
ever saw. Ranging along on the starboard, 
as our yacht comes in, are the Elizabeth 



38 THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 

Islands, of which the nearest to us is Cutty- 
hunk, containing five hundred acres. Off its 
southerly point lies the Vineyard Sound 
lightship, which sometimes breaks adrift 
from its moorings when a hard gale from the 
southeast is blowing. Then schooners run- 
ning through the Sound, and missing this 
landmark, are wrecked on reefs called The 
Sow and Pigs, which stretch out from the 
south shore of the island. Its surface is a 
succession of hills and valleys growing coarse 
grass, without a tree, or a shrub, or any ves- 
tige of the " noble forests " which Gosnold 
saw, containing, as he said, " the elegantine 
the thorn and the honeysuckle the wild pea 
the tansey and young sassafras strawberries 
rapsberries grapevines all in profusion." 
Here the stone-walled cellar of Gosnold's 
storehouse was identified, in the year 1797, 
as a relic of the first visit of Europeans to 
the southern shores of New England. We 
can run into its harbor, which is a good shel- 
ter in all kinds of weather except a north- 
easter. A short walk from the landing-place 
brings us to a settlement of about thirty 
houses, whose few inhabitants depend upon 
seafaring, piloting, and fishing for a living. 



THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 39 

We see a meeting-house and a school-house, 
and the preacher is the school-master. We 
see nets and sails spread on door-yard fences 
to be dried. The only things that cause an 
excitement in this little community are a 
wreck, and the arrival of a mail-bag from 
New Bedford, which is fifteen miles distant. 
When the mail arrives, all islanders who are 
ashore hurry to the back door of the post- 
master's house, and wait while he takes up 
each letter and newspaper, submits them to 
the scrutiny of his spectacles, and shouts the 
written name as soon as he has spelled it 
out. The owner of the name answers the 
call, and takes his mail with approval from 
the bystanders. 

Two miles northwest of Cuttyhunk lies 
Penikese Island, of one hundred acres. Its 
shape is something like a pair of eye-glasses ; 
two high hills representing the eyes, and a 
narrow beach, which forms a harbor, repre- 
senting the nose-bow. In the flush times of 
whaling, this island was occupied by pilots, 
who kept a steady lookout from the hills for 
those picturesque old ships, deep-laden with 
sperm oil, which all the year round came 
lumbering into the bay bound to New Bed- 



40 THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 

ford. In the year 1873 the island was trans- 
ferred to Agassiz's School of Natural His- 
tory. Whittier says : — 

" On the isle of Penikese, 
Ringed about by sapphire seas, 
Fanned by breezes salt and cool, 
Stood the Master and his school." 

The school spent only one summer on the 
island, for the Master died in the end of the 
year ; and the poet says : — 

" In the lap of sheltering seas. 
Rests the isle of Penikese ; 
But the lord of the domain 
Comes not to his own again." 

East of Cuttyhunk, and near it, is Nasha- 
wena Island, of fifteen hundred acres, used 
as a sheep pasture, and noted for its beach 
of rolling stones. East of Nashawena lies 
Pasque Island, of a thousand acres, sometimes 
called Pesquinese. Its name came from the 
Indian Pascechanset, by which it was known 
when, in the year 1725, Abraham Tucker of 
Dartmouth, on the western shore of the bay, 
willed his lands thereon to his son. The 
island, bought from its Indian possessors in 
the year 1667, was continuously used for the 
rearing of sheep until it was sold to a fishing 



THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 41 

club. While the British occupied Rhode 
Island during the Revolution, food was for- 
aged frequently from Pasque and neighboring 
islands. On a day in May, 1778, fifteen hun- 
dred sheep, stolen from them, were landed 
at Newport for the British fleet. 

East of Pasque lies Naushon, which is 
seven miles long, and contains five thousand 
five hundred acres ; the most beautiful island 
estate on the Atlantic coast. It has two 
harbors, a light-house, old forests of beech, 
oak, hickory, pine, and cedar trees. White 
men have possessed it since the year 1641. 
The Mayhew family owned it forty-one years ; 
the Winthrop family, forty-eight years ; the 
Bowdoin family, one hundred and thirteen 
years. In the " Gentleman's Magazine," of 
the year 1 747, may be seen the following an- 
nouncement : " Dy'd at Boston in New Eng- 
land Wm. Bowdine Esqr. worth one million 
of their currency ; he left two sons and three 
daughters ; to the former, 1 50,000 /. ; to the 
other 100,000 /. / and 20,000 /. to charitable 
uses." This man owned Naushon. The 
next owner was his son James Bowdoin, the 
governor of Massachusetts in the years 1785 
and 1786, who failed of a third election 



42 THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 

because of the energy with which he extin- 
guished Shays' Rebellion. The next owner 
was his grandson, James Bowdoin, who in- 
herited one half of the island, and acquired 
the other half by marriage with a cousin. 
Near its eastern harbor he built a stately 
mansion, and spread a great feast in it for 
his friends. He died in his chair at the feast, 
while sounds of merriment were in his ears. 
The house was then shut up, and it became 
in public imagination a haunted house, at- 
tracting the visits of curious idlers until the 
agents of new owners opened its doors, threw 
up its windows, and let in light and air upon 
the mouldy scenes. 

An act of the legislature of the Province, 
in the year 1765, tells of the existence of 
moose on Naushon, which was then known 
as " Tarpolin Cove Island otherwise called 
Naushon or Catamock." The owners of the 
island complained that " the raising and in- 
crease of moose and deer " were prevented 
by hunters who landed to shoot the game, 
or "destroyed it by their dogs." The fine 
to be levied on poachers was six pounds " for 
each and every moose or deer ; " one half 
of it to go to his majesty King George the 



THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 43 

Second, and one half to the informer. There 
are deer, but no moose now in the region of 
Buzzard's Bay. 

The names of the Elizabeth Islands have 
been preserved in the following old rhymes, 
whose origin is unknown : — 

" Naushon, Nonamesset, 
Onkatonka, and Wepecket, 
Nashawena, Pesquinese, 
Cuttyhunk, and Penikese." 

An interesting reminiscence of the former 
connection between Old England and New 
England is to be found in the names of 
ancient towns adjacent to Buzzard's Bay. 
These are Dartmouth, Rochester, Wareham, 
Sandwich, and Falmouth ; names brought 
from the south of England by men who con- 
tinued to be Englishmen in these their new 
homes. On the larboard, as a yacht enters 
the bay, stands the Dumpling Rock Light, 
pointing the way to Apponaganset, the port 
of Dartmouth. The town's land was bought 
from the Wampanoags, in the year 1652, by 
the gift of 30 yards of trucking cloth, 8 
moose skins, 15 hoes, 15 pairs of breeches, 
8 blankets, 2 kettles, i clock, 8 pairs of 
stockings, 8 pairs of shoes, i iron pot, 3 /. 



44 THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 

in wampum, and lO shillings' worth of other 
odds and ends. The variety of merchan- 
dise turned over to the Indians by this trans- 
action was as great as is now to be found in 
an ordinary country store on the bay shores. 
In the same manner do white men trade 
with inferior races now. 

During the summer time the old town 
draws in many visitors ; and as the south 
wind comes direct from the sea, it gives 
to them an agreeable climate. The great 
historic fact concerning the town is that its 
inhabitants were the first in New England to 
rebel against the Puritan union of church 
and state. By refusing to pay taxes for the 
support of a ministry whose ministrations 
they would not accept, and by obtaining an 
approval of their action from King George 
the First, they established the right of every 
New Englander to worship God according 
to the dictates of his own conscience, — a 
right which had previously existed in theory 
only. The long struggle for religious liberty 
which the townsmen of Dartmouth carried 
on against the rulers of Plymouth Colony, 
and afterwards against those of the Province 
of Massachusetts Bay, shows how thick New 



THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BA Y 45 

England had been crusted over by a tyran- 
nical system of theology. But 

" The pilgrim needs a pass no more 
From Roman or Genevan ; 
Thought-free, no ghostly tollman keeps 
Henceforth the road to Heaven." ' 

The run of the yacht is short from Dart- 
mouth to New Bedford, which is pleasantly 
situated on the Acushnet River, busy with 
manufacturing industries, but still retaining 
its old flavors of the sea. The smell of 
whale-oil pervading the wharves, where casks 
of it are stowed under heaps of sea-weed ; 
the lofts where men are always cutting out 
and sewing sails ; the sheds where they are 
building whale-boats ; and the old dismantled 
ships, whose exploits have been recorded 
many times in whaling records, are reminis- 
cences of the enterprises which have pro- 
duced the great wealth of this city. Whale- 
men say that whales are now as numerous as 
ever in the ocean, and that the business of 
catching them is a matter of luck ; that good 
luck or bad luck follows a ship for a long 
time ; and while some ships are always slow 
to sight a whale, and rarely get a full catch, 
others will fasten to all the whales they want, 
and are always making a good voyage. 



46 THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BA Y 

On the eastern bank of the river lies Fair- 
haven, where the Old Colony railroad begins 
its circuit of the bay. During the Revolu- 
tion an important event occurred here, which 
has been nearly forgotten. At that time the 
village attracted many strangers, as the port 
was a convenient place for fitting out priva- 
teers and for receiving their prizes. While 
it was in this flourishing condition, four 
thousand British troops were landed on 
Clark's Neck, September 5, 1778. They 
marched up the west side of the river, across 
the bridge, and down the east side, burning 
many buildings on their way, encamped on 
Sconticut Neck for a night, and then re- 
turned to their ships. On the next night a 
detachment from these troops was sent to 
burn Fairhaven. Their approach was dis- 
covered by Major Israel Fearing, of Ware- 
ham, who was posted in the village, with 
about one hundred and fifty men. He placed 
them in ambush, and allowed the enemy to 
reach the shore ; then he opened a fire, 
which was so severe that they retreated im- 
mediately to the ships. His skill saved the 
village from destruction. 

Running out of the Acushnet River, the 



THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 47 

yacht passes West Island, of eight hundred 
acres, whose Indian name was Markataw. It 
was sold to white men in the year 1666, with 
the condition that if a whale should be 
stranded on the island it is to be divided 
equally between the seller and the buyer. 
Standing up the bay, the yacht now makes 
Ned's Point Light, at the entrance of the 
harbor of Mattapoiset. Maddepayset River, 
as the provincial laws called it, empties into 
the harbor ; and the name, in the language 
of the Indian King Philip, who sold the land 
to Englishmen of Plymouth, is said to sig- 
nify a place of rest. It is the place of sum- 
mer rest for many urban families, whose red- 
roofed houses are conspicuous features in its 
landscapes. From the town the bay spreads 
away to the eastward like an open sea, and 
the blue highlands of Wood's Holl seem to 
be lying on a far-distant horizon. Hundreds 
of sea-going vessels were builded at Matta- 
poiset in former times ; but the ways from 
which they were slipped into the bay, amid 
enthusiastic cheers, were taken down long 
ago, and the places where they stood are now 
covered by the gardens and lawns of summer 
cottages. A little picture in the village, as it 



48 THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 

once was, may be seen in this verse from a 
poem by Richard Henry Stoddard : — 

" Old homestead, in that gray old town I 
Thy vane is seaward blowing ; 
The slip of garden stretches down 

To where the tide is flowing ; 
Below they lie, their sails all furled, 
The ships that go about the world." 

Further up the bay stands Bird Island 
Light, pointing to Sippecan harbor, which 
reaches far into the land. On its shore 
lies the prospering village of Marion, which, 
under the name of Sippecan, was settled 
about the year 1680, by men from the south 
of England, who builded ships and went to 
sea. Their descendants revealed their sea 
heredity in a vote that the village high school 
" shall hail " as the Sippecan Academy. No 
doubt the principal teacher was then hailed 
as captain, the classes were hailed as star- 
bowlines and larbowlines, and the boy pro- 
moted to the head of a class was ordered to 
"Lay out to the weather earing!" The 
main street of the village would naturally end, 
as it does end, on a wharf; for in early days 
the sea tinged every thought of the villagers. 
The door-steps of their low dwelling-houses 



THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 49 

were adorned with sea-shells, fences were 
topped off by old studding-sail booms, and the 
houses were builded near to each other as if 
the families to occupy them would have need 
of neighborly company while their men were 
absent on whaling voyages. Now the sum- 
mer visitor has come, and the seaman has 
gone, and the quaint old village is in a state 
of transition to a popular waterside resort. 
But some of the natural charm of former 
times remains. If you look out upon the bay, 
of a clear morning, you will see a panorama 

" Where heaven lends her loveliest scene ; 
A softened air, a sky serene, 
Along the shore where smiles the sea." 

Sailing out of Sippecan harbor, we pass the 
Great Hill, so called from its great extent, 
but celebrated for nothing in colonial history 
except its warm pasturages. It is the most 
prominent landmark on the western side of 
the bay, as Tempest Knob is on the eastern 
side. Between these stretch the highlands 
of Agawame Neck, in the township of Ware- 
ham, on which one may see elegant dwelling- 
houses of recent dates, and remains of the 
cellars of dwellings that were builded by 
the Plymouth yeomen who first occupied 



50 THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 

the land in the year 1682. Under the waters 
in front of the Neck, and in the flats of its 
Little Harbor, lie immense beds of scallops, 
whose products are abundant enough to 
supply all the markets of New England. On 
the northern side of the Great Hill the We- 
weantet River, joined by the Sippecan, comes 
into the bay with a broad sweep. Above it 
is seen Cromeset Neck ; above this the Woon- 
kinco and Agawame rivers flow in ; and 
where their waters blend with the tides of 
the bay lie beds of Wareham oysters, whose 
flavor is praised wherever bivalves are eaten. 
As our yacht runs to the eastward, we pass 
a fleet of fishing boats anchored on Dry 
Ledge, and can see their occupants hauling 
in tautog and scup hand over hand. Then a 
school of bluefish is discovered to windward. 
Immediately the yacht is put about, and runs 
to the west with four lines trailing astern, 
and bluefish coming in over the taffrail as 
fast as they can be taken care of. Now and 
then we lose one; for while the fish is leap- 
ing ahead of the long line, he works the hook 
out of his mouth ; or, in the struggle against 
us, the strain on the line breaks his jaw. It 
is a wild sport. The quick play and haul 



THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 51 

of the lines as the game is hooked, the calls 
to " Haul him in quick out of the wet ! " his 
muscular leaps for freedom as we bring him 
to deck, the rapid motions of the boat, the 
flying spray, are a part of the exciting plea- 
sures of bluefishing. 

Now we return to our course, double Tem- 
pest Knob, and sail northward through nar- 
row channels, passing wooded islands named 
Mashna, Tobey, Onset, and Wicket, and at 
last we drop anchor in a little pocket of deep 
water. On the neighboring bluffs, which are 
covered with oak trees, stand the cottages 
and temples of an association of Spiritualists, 
whose gala day is Sunday. Here I go ashore 
and become a part of an audience in the 
amphitheatre listening to various messages 
which are announced as received from a 
world of spirits. A disconsolate widower 
hears his dead wife's spirit say, " Don't 
worry so, my dear ! " A broken-hearted 
mother who has lost her only boy receives a 
written message saying, " Ma, I 've learned to 
rite ! " A long-haired man passes his hand 
over the head of a girl and says, " The angels 
are hovering above you." But not all who 
are present believe in these delusions. A man 



52 THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 

in the audience with whom I talked said to 
me : " I come here to see folks. I give up 
goin' to sea ten year ago ; but down to Long 
Plain where I live there ain't much that 's 
folksy goin' on except funerals. Get tired 
seeing same people and talkin' to 'em along- 
side a corpse. Came here to git posted about 
what's going on. Go to Yarmouth camp- 
meeting and the Vineyard and take 'em all 
in ; but I don't believe any on 'em ! " He 
was a sample of many who are drawn hither 
from the countryside to see this summer 
show. 

" Head-th-bay," as the natives call it, is 
thirty miles from the entrance at Gooseberry 
Neck. The homesteads of Englishmen who 
settled here two hundred years ago have be- 
come the summer dwelling places of people 
of leisure from distant cities, whose preten- 
tious villas now rear their heads where once 

" The wild fox dug his hole unscared." 

Here the waters, passing through a narrow 
rift, widen out into a quiet expanse called 
Buttermilk Bay, which is encircled by wooded 
hills. Again there is a narrow run of water, 
by the Indians called Cohasset, and near by 
is the Buzzard's Bay station of the Cape Cod 



THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 53 

railroad, where brazen - throated brakemen 
thrust their heads in at the car doors, and in 
drawling yells command the passengers to 
" Change cars for Falmouth, Wood's Holl, 
Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket ! " 

The eastern shore of Buzzard's Bay is a 
part of Barnstable County, whose general 
name is Cape Cod. It is probably the only 
section of the Atlantic States in which a 
native population remains unadulterated by 
foreign blood. From the bay shore to Race 
Point, the northern tip of the Cape, and 
to Monomoy at its southern extremity, the 
names and descendants of English colonists 
of two hundred years ago are still to be 
found. The livelihood which its inhabitants 
have been drawing from the sea has been 
supplemented of late years by the cultiva- 
tion of cranberries, pink water-lilies, trout 
streams, and summer boarders. Year after 
year the boarders come with the mackerel, 
and in numbers that tax the capacity of the 
one - track railway which winds its dusty 
course from Buzzard's Bay to Provincetown ; 
where the inhabitants do not own a foot of 
the soil, for the whole township land belongs 
to the State. All the Cape horses and vehi- 



54 THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 

cles stand in waiting for their coming, and 
to carry them ojEf to pine groves or sandy 
beaches ; and thus the summer boarder is 
preserving the Hfe of Cape Cod. 

As we sail down this bay shore of the 
Cape, we pass " Gray Gables," the summer 
house of the President of the United States, 
who has publicly said that those " who enjoy 
the cool breezes of Buzzard's Bay are favored 
above all others by a kind Providence." 
Near it Monument River flows into the bay. 
The first European who sailed up the stream 
was probably the Secretary of the New Am- 
sterdam Colony, when he made his famous 
visit to Plymouth in the year 1627. Down 
along the shore is Monument Beach, a curv- 
ing strand stretching back to green knolls on 
which stand clusters of summer cottages and 
a large hotel. The hull of an old sloop lies 
by the water's edge ; and on any summer 
morning, rows of people in various costumes 
are to be seen seated on its' rails, gazing idly 
at the bathers. It may be washing-day on 
shore, when from every clothes-line streams 
away, on the southwest wind, white under- 
wear in quantity sufficient to indicate that a 
large summer population is in the neighbor- 



THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 55 

hood. Below is Pocasset, whose old houses 
once sheltered retired shipmasters, and are 
now the resorts of summer people. Then 
we come to Wenaumet, jutting into the bay, 
supporting on its point the Wing's Neck 
Light ; then to Cataumet and its little har- 
bor, Chappoquoit Point and its costly sum- 
mer villas, Wild Harbor, Racing Beach, and 
the Falmouths, whose town history began in 
the year 1686 ; then to Quamquisset, its cot- 
tages, summer hotel, and cove of deep water. 
At last we reach Wood's Holl. This is the 
place of departure for travelers to Nantucket, 
where you are offered a chance at cast-and- 
haul fishing in a thundering surf, with glori- 
ous views of the Atlantic Ocean. You are 
also offered corals, and sea shells, and whales' 
teeth. One may doubt the reputed antiquity 
of Nantucket shingles, tied with ribbons and 
forming covers to series of photographs, 
which are offered with a certificate that they 
are two hundred years old. But you cannot 
doubt the truthfulness of the pretty sea 
mosses enclosed in scallop shells, nor of the 
little blue forget-me-nots, nor the freshness 
of the fish that has been broiled for your 
supper, nor the pureness of the air that is 



56 THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 

fanning your cheeks all day, whether you are 
ashore or afloat. 

Samuel Sewall, the witchcraft judge, made 
this note of embarking here on his way to 
Martha's Vineyard, in April, 1702 : " Call at 
Mr. Robinson's, they give us good small Beer. 
Go to ye Ferry-house ; his Boat is at Little 
Wood's hole ; travel thither, there embark 
and have a good passage over in little more 
than an hour's time." 

From time immemorial Wood's Hole has 
been the name of the village and its two 
harbors, and of the narrow water-way which 
separates the island of Naushon from the 
mainland. There is a record dated in the 
year 1677 of a laying out of lands " at 
Wood's Hole ; " and also an Indian deed of 
the year 1679, of "all that tract commonly 
called Wood's Hole Neck." The name is 
therefore historic. On the shores of Buz- 
zard's Bay a " Hole " apparently means a 
pocket of water, a cove, a sea -passage way 
through islands, into which vessels may run 
for a shelter. For such places it was a com- 
mon name with Englishmen of the Plymouth 
Colony. In their records of the year 1651, 
I find mention made of the "waterside or 



THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 57 

Creeke commonly called and known by the 
name of Hobs Hole ; " so named by the 
Mayflower colonists in the year 1623. In 
the year 1677 mention is made of " Billing- 
tons holes neare unto or upon Jonses River." 
In the same year the colony gave to Jonathan 
Morey " three score acrees of upland att the 
salt water pond by the way between Plymouth 
and Sandwich." This pond took the name 
of Morey's Hole, and it has been known by 
that name to this day. 

In the year 1875, the voters of the vil- 
lage, "with one exception," signed a peti- 
tion to the Post Office Department of the 
United States to change the name to " Wood's 
Holl." That " one exception " deserves a 
monument. His act was an intelligent pro- 
test against the manufacture of false history 
on Buzzard's Bay. The theory on which 
the petition rested was that Northmen from 
Scandinavia "passed along Cape Cod through 
Vineyard Sound to Narragansett Bay, where 
it is believed they settled ; " and that the hills 
around Wood's Hole were called " holls " by 
the Northmen. 

A great deal of history has been attributed 
to those hardy men, who "bravely fought 



58 777^ AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 

like heroes bold and ruled the stormy sea ; " 
but there exists no indisputable evidence 
that they ever saw Buzzard's Bay. Some 
writers say that they ventured as far south 
as Boston Harbor ; and these persons have 
testified to that faith by setting up a stone 
tower on a bank of Charles River. Any- 
body can set up a tower, or a statue, or per- 
haps a new post-office to commemorate an 
opinion. Boston contains a statue which rep- 
resents an opinion that Leif Ericson and his 
crew discovered the North American conti- 
nent in the year looo or thereabouts. The 
reputation of this Northman as the discov- 
erer of some western world rests entirely 
upon the stories of the sagas of Iceland, 
written some three hundred years after the 
alleged event. Nothing in literature is more 
untrustworthy than the statements of these 
flowery compositions, in which, as has been 
said, " the story-telling of the fireside has 
overlaid the reports of the explorer." In- 
deed, many students of history believe that 
the heroes of the sagas were fictitious char- 
acters, as much so as were those who sailed 
to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece, 
as told in old Greek poems ; and that the 



THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY $9 

narratives of the sagas have no more basis 
on truth than have the narratives of the 
Iliad. It is possible that roving seamen 
from Scandinavia, freebooters or fishermen, 
may have reached the northeastern shores of 
America ; but, as Mr. Bancroft intimates in 
his history, there is not to be found an au- 
thentic vestige of their presence on any part 
of the continent now occupied by the Eng- 
lish race, notwithstanding the Charles River 
tower, the Boston statue, and the transfor- 
mation of Wood's Hole into Wood's Holl. 

There are no bold voyagers to enter Buz- 
zard's Bay now, save contraband fishing 
steamers with the police boat in their wake. 
The regular bay cruisers are steamboats run- 
ning between New Bedford, Martha's Vine- 
yard, and Nantucket ; or one loaded with 
summer people bound to Onset, or to Gay 
Head ; then there are to be seen a few coal 
and lumber laden sloops and schooners, fish- 
ermen, and pleasure boats, a steam yacht 
from Naushon, and the steamer carrying 
supplies to the light-houses in the bay. In 
summer the upper part of the bay frequently 
presents a gay appearance, as the white boats 
of a yacht club sail their regattas from Sip- 



6o THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 

pecan harbor, or Onset, Large ships are 
rarely to be seen. A great excitement was 
once caused along the upper shores, when 
news was passed from house to house : 
" There 's a big ship in the bay ! " Inhabi- 
tants of the surrounding hamlets gathered 
on the beaches, and saw at anchor the ship 
Sunrise, of New York, asking for a pilot. 
It was learned that she had mistaken the 
light on Cuttyhunk for that on Gay Head, 
and had entered Buzzard's Bay instead of 
Vineyard Sound. 

When bluefish " strike in," there is an 
excitement all along shore, and all sorts of 
craft strike out in pursuit of them. Many 
men who were born on the bay shores, and 
went away to seek fortune, are in the habit 
of returning annually to enjoy the summer 
fishing which the bay affords ; to cast their 
lines for scup, tautog, bass, Spanish mack- 
erel, squeteague, and bluefish. Of all these, 
the bluefish gives the most sport. The 
exhilarating method of taking them is by 
trolling with a squid of block tin, made in 
the image of a small fish, which is rubbed 
bright, so that it will glisten in the water, 
and has a tail affixed to it made of eel-skin. 



THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 6i 

Bluefish are more abundant during some 
years than during others. They dislike cool 
water ; but whenever the temperature of the 
sea ranges from sixty to seventy-five degrees, 
the bay is likely to be full of them. Their 
coming and going have been mysterious. 
From the year 1659 to the year 1763, they 
were recorded as plentiful about Nantucket 
and the south shore of Barnstable County 
during the summers ; but in the year 1764 
they disappeared suddenly, and it is stated 
that they were not seen again in northern 
waters, except in small schools, until the 
year 18 10; when and thereafter they re- 
turned in large numbers annually to Buz- 
zard's Bay. There is a tradition that dur- 
ing their absence their return was annually 
expected and watched for all along the 
shore. At last a large school came into 
the bay on a Sunday morning in June, and 
the lads who discovered them hurried to the 
meeting-house to proclaim the glad tidings. 
The doors were wide open, the preacher 
was expounding, when a shrill cry rang in : 
" Bluefish in the bay ! " In a twinkling the 
meeting-house was emptied, and every boat 
belonging to the village was soon spreading 



62 THE AMBIT OF BUZZARD'S BAY 

its sails for the open water. This action 
was not without precedent. I have read in 
the annals of Truro, on Cape Cod, that in 
February, 1755, the people were assembled 
in their meeting-house for the ordination of 
the town's minister ; when, on account of 
certain news received at the door, it was 
" Voted that as many of the inhabitants are 
called away from the meeting by news of a 
whale in the bay, this meeting be adjourned." 
They wanted a whale before they wanted a 
preacher. There are many people who have 
the same want now. 




LIFE ON MATINICUS ROCK 




LIFE ON MATINICUS ROCK 



Matinicus Rock stands in the Atlantic 
Ocean thirty miles south of the entrance to 
the Penobscot River. Three families are liv- 
ing on it to take care of the sea lights ; their 
only companions are innumerable seabirds 

" Wheeling round it with the din 
Of wings, and winds, and solitary cries." 

The summit of the rock is about fifty feet 
above the level of the ocean, and its irregular 
surface of thirty-five or forty acres resembles 
a heap of boulders. Captain John Smith, in 
his quaint " Description of New England," 
recited the islands and rocks which he dis- 
covered off the coast of Maine, and called 
this the " Rock of Mattanack much furder in 
the sea." If you want to visit it, the light- 
house inspector at Portland may offer to you 
the voyage of a hundred miles in a steamer 
that carries supplies to the rock ; or you 



66 LIFE ON MATINICUS ROCK 

may take passage at Rockland in a fishing 
schooner bound south. After a run of twen- 
ty-five miles, the schooner will heave to off 
the rock and the skipper will row you to it 
in a dory. This will be steered to timber 
ways which slope down into the sea in a 
little cove ; when the dory is carried in on 
top of a swell, it will be hooked to a tackle 
and drawn up the sloping ways by a windlass 
manned by the light-keepers. That is the 
usual method of landing upon Matinicus, 
and it can be successful only when the sea 
is smooth. In summer and in winter there 
are days when the landing can be made ; 
and in both seasons there are weeks when 
Atlantic winds are howling across the rock, 
and a tempestuous sea forbids any approach 
to it. 

The first things that attract attention on 
landing are the two stone towers supporting 
the lights, ninety-five feet above the sea level, 
which may be seen from a ship's deck fifteen 
miles away. Between the towers is a tow of 
low dwelling-houses occupied by the light- 
keepers' families. Near by are a house for 
storing oil, and a brick cistern for holding 
rain-water. At one side is a scaffolding from 



LIFE ON MATINICUS ROCK 67 

which hangs a heavy bell, and on the other 
side stands a brick building containing ma- 
chinery for operating steam whistles ; all else 
is the ragged, fissured rock against which the 
ocean is always striking, and in its mildest 
moods is asserting itself so loudly that you 
can hardly hear human speech. 

The rock is in the gateway of an ocean 
thoroughfare which in pleasant weather is 
traversed by all kinds of sea-going craft ; 
there are steamers passing to and fro be- 
tween Boston and ports in Maine and New 
Brunswick, ice and lumber loaded schooners 
bound out of the Penobscot River, smacks 
following schools of mackerel, or bound to 
distant fishing banks, yachts racing out of 
Marblehead, large ships fresh from the build- 
ing yards at Bath, and occasionally a British 
steamer from England steering for Portland 
Harbor. 

Far different is the scene when a fog cov- 
ers the ocean and a drizzling east wind is 
blowing. Then the steam whistle on the 
rock shrieks its alarms at intervals of twenty- 
five seconds as long as the fog lasts ; or, if 
the whistle is disabled, a great bell on the 
rock strikes a continuous warning, so that 



68 LIFE ON MATINICUS A'OCA' 

if any ships are near they may know the 
bearings of Matinicus. The cries of the 
ocean and of the wind and of the bell or the 
whistle, when combined in one confusion, 
are probably tormenting to the ears of those 
living on the rock as anything that can be 
imagined to exist in the infernal regions. 
" It seems hard," said a light-keeper during 
the prevalence of a fog, " that the whistle 
must go on without stop when one of us lies 
sick abed, or a child is near dying and jumps 
at every blast of it." 

Here one may see the ocean in its wildest 
moods. The light-keeper said to me : " I 
have seen the sea running so high against 
the rock that the spray flew completely over 
the domes of the lighthouses." More than 
once has the rock been swept across its 
lengtli and breadth by the Atlantic Ocean. 
On a January morning the ocean rose before 
a terrific gale. The light-keeper had gone 
to land the day before, leaving the care of 
the lights to his eldest daughter. The living 
things on the rock, besides the family, were 
their hens. As the gale increased, the girl 
saw that unless the flock was brought in it 
would be lost in the sea. Seizins; a basket 



LIFE ON MATINICUS ROCK 69 

she ran out on the rock, after the rollers 

had passed and the sea had fallen off a little, 

and rescued from the coop all but one. It 

was the work of a minute, and she was then 

back with the door fastened : but at that in- 
* 

stant her little sister, standing at a window, 
exclaimed : " Oh, look ! the worst wave is 
coming ! " That wave destroyed one of the 
dwelling-houses and overwhelmed the rock. 

One day Captain Burgess, the light-keeper, 
left the rock to obtain provisions, as the 
weather had for a long time been so stormy 
that no communication from the shore had 
reached him. A storm delayed his return, 
and famine began to threaten the people left 
on the rock. To obtain help, his son started 
away in a skiff which was rigged with a sail. 
He was soon lost to sight in the trough of 
the sea, then he was seen on the top of the 
waves a short distance off, and that was the 
last the family saw of him for twenty-one 
days. In the mean time the mother and her 
daughters put themselves on a daily allow- 
ance of one cup of corn meal and one ^g^y 
while the eldest daughter Abby tended the 
lights until relief came from land. 

Of a light-keeper's children, two were born 



70 LIFE ON MATINICUS ROCK 

and one died on Matinicus ; where there is 
no " God's acre " to receive the dead. The 
child's coffin was laid on a level spot of the 
rock, a cairn of bricks was built over it, the 
bricks were covered with earth, the earth 
was sown with flower seeds ; and that was 
the child's grave. When Abby's mother died 
on the rock, the ocean was so rough that no 
boat could make a landing until the next day. 
In speaking of this event she said : " I pre- 
pared the body for its last resting-place, and 
the keeper made the coffin. We hoisted a 
signal of distress, which was seen at Matini- 
cus Island, five miles to the northward, and 
two fishermen rowed over. They had to 
wait until three waves had run in and run 
out ; then there was a smooth spell, and they 
backed their boat in and jumped on to the 
rock, and stayed with us that night. The 
next day the sea was smooth enough for 
friends to come in a schooner. They took 
the dead body away, and buried it in the 
graveyard at Rockland. My husband and I 
did not go to the grave, because we had to 
stay on the rock to tend the lights. There 
were two other deaths since I have lived on 
the rock ; a young man was drowned in try- 



LIFE ON MATINICUS ROCK 71 

ing to land ; another was drowned after he 
had left the rock, the undertow capsizing his 
boat. It is just as dangerous at Mount De- 
sert Rock, which is thirty-three miles to the 
eastward of Matinicus. That rock is low and 
flat, but outlying ledges break the force of 
the sea. A little boy was chasing the waves 
there ; he ran after them as they receded, 
and when they came in he ran back. His 
mother was standing in the lighthouse door 
calling him, when a big wave rolled up and 
carried him away from her sight forever." 

The Lighthouse Board at Washington does 
much to make light -keepers comfortable 
in the discharge of their duties, while at the 
same time it maintains a rigid discipline over 
them. An inspector, who is an officer of 
the navy, visits each station in his district at 
regular times, and sees that all needed com- 
forts and supplies are provided, and that the 
rules of the service are observed. The dis- 
cipline is of necessity almost merciless. In 
the year 1801, Thomas Jefferson wrote : "I 
think the keepers of the lighthouses should 
be dismissed for small degrees of remissness, 
because of the calamities which even these 
produce." This opinion animates the execu- 



72 LIFE ON MATINICUS ROCK 

tive acts of the board. A keeper found in- 
toxicated is instantly ejected from his station 
and from the lighthouse service, and one who 
allows his lamps to go out before sunrise is 
dismissed without regard to his previous good 
conduct. To take faithful care of his light 
and of the property belonging to it is the 
keeper's paramount duty. He is expected to 
stand by his light as long as his lighthouse 
stands, even if the winter gale is as power- 
ful as that in which the Minot's Ledge Light 
and its keepers perished. 

Light-keepers are compelled to wear a uni- 
form dress ; they are furnished with a good 
dwelling-house, and when stationed far dis- 
tant from a market, as on Matinicus Rock, 
they are provided with rations. Their pay 
ranges up to one thousand dollars a year, 
according to the perils of their location ; and 
they are sure of receiving it so long as they 
are faithful to their duties. Their houses 
contain a library in a portable case, hold- 
ing about fifty volumes on various subjects. 
Every three months the library is exchanged 
by the inspector for another. One may sup- 
pose that people living on such isolated sta- 
tions as Matinicus, or Mount Desert Rock, 



LIFE ON MATINICUS ROCK 73 

which is twenty - two miles from land, or 
Nantucket South Shoal lightship, which is 
twenty-three miles from land, would become 
crazed by the solitude of their lives were it 
not for these libraries. But the truth is that 
men whose lives are spent on the ocean are 
not readers of literature. In the lighthouse 
service they stand watch and watch, as crews 
do at sea ; and the thoughts and habits 
of many of the light-keepers, all of whom 
have been seamen, are so closely allied to 
their occupations that narratives of wrecks 
and disasters to ships, by which they can 
compare their own experience with that of 
others, are more interesting to them than 
history, or biography, or fiction. The only 
book in the Nantucket South Shoal light- 
ship which is well thumbed and frequently 
referred to is said to be one containing a 
record of vessels that have met with disaster 
on the Nantucket coast. Each vessel is a 
personality to the lightship men. 

Captain Grant went with his family to live 
on Matinicus Rock, as light-keeper, in the 
year 1861. The previous keeper left with 
the new-comers his daughter, Abby Burgess, 
whom I have mentioned, to teach them how 



74 LIFE ON MA Time US ROCK 

to manage the lights. She had been on the 
rock since the year 1853. The captain's 
son, Isaac, was an interested pupil, and in 
the course of time he married the young 
teacher, who soon after received an appoint- 
ment as an assistant keeper of the lights. 
The rock was her home, and there her chil- 
dren were reared. But she had a longing 
desire for a home on an inland farm, and she 
waited the time when for her " there shall 
be no more sea." 

That time began to come in the year 1875, 
when she and her husband were transferred 
to White-Head Light, while the captain, her 
husband's father, remained in charge of Ma- 
tinicus. White-Head is an island near the 
western entrance to Penobscot Bay, and is 
so near the mainland that the light-keeper 
can row across the channel to Spruce-Head 
for a daily mail, if he chooses to do so. Near 
the lighthouse were small patches of land 
and a garden. Not far away were the ever- 
green woods, and browsing cattle, and fields 
of grass. There was a piano in her new 
home ; but in front of it was the wearisome 
sea, upon which she must look every day, for 
which she must light the lamps every night ; 



LIFE ON MATINICUS ROCK 75 

and by her door stood the dreadful steam 
whistle, screeching its dismal blasts when 
fogs covered the coast. Here they lived fif- 
teen years, keeping in charge the White- 
Head Light. But all the time some hopes 
of another home remote from the ocean were 
kept alive in her heart. One day she wrote 
a letter to a friend living near the Green 
Mountains of Vermont, in which she re- 
viewed her work of keeping ocean lights 
burning, to which thirty-seven years of her 
life had been devoted, and said : — 

" Sometimes I think the time is not far 
distant when I shall climb these lighthouse 
stairs no more ; then there will be another 
watcher who will take my place ; but there 
never will be anybody who can take a greater 
interest in the light than I have taken. It 
has almost seemed to me that the light was 
a part of myself. 

"When we had care of the old lard-oil 
lamps on Matinicus Rock, they were more 
difficult to tend than these lamps are, and 
sometimes they would not burn so well when 
first lighted, especially in cold weather, when 
the oil got cool. Then some nights I could 
not sleep a wink all night, though I knew 



76 LIFE ON MATINICUS ROCK 

the keeper himself was watching. And 
many times I have watched the Hghts my 
part of the night, and then could not sleep 
the rest of the night, thinking, nervously, 
what might happen should the light fail. I 
felt just the same interest in it before I re- 
ceived any pay. I lived on the rock nearly 
seventeen years before I was appointed an 
assistant, or had any pay for my work. 

" In all these years I always put the lamps 
in order in the morning, and I lit them at 
sunset. Those old lamps, as they were when 
my father lived on Matinicus Rock, are so 
thoroughly impressed on my memory, that 
even now I often dream of them. There 
were fourteen lamps and fourteen reflectors. 
When I dream of them, it always seems as 
though I had been away a long while, and I 
am trying to get back in time to light the 
lamps. Then I am halfway between Matini- 
cus and White-Head, and am hurrying to- 
ward the rock to light the lamps there in 
time to be at White-Head to light the lamps 
there before sunset. Sometimes I walk on 
the water ; sometimes I am in a boat ; and 
sometimes I seem going in the air. I must 
always see the lights burning in both places 



LIFE ON MAT/NIC US ROCK 77 

before I wake. I always go through the 
same scenes in cleaning the lamps and light- 
ing them, and I feel a great deal more wor- 
ried in my dreams than I do when I am 
awake. I wonder if the care of the light- 
house will follow my soul after it has left 
this wornout body. If I ever have a grave- 
stone, I would like it to be in the form of a 
lighthouse." 

At last this noble woman secured an in- 
land home, to which she and her husband 
retired in the month when the apple-trees of 
New England are in blossom. Six months 
later Captain Grant, who had kept the lights 
on Matinicus Rock burning for twenty-nine 
years, resigned his charge, and retired to the 
home of his son on land, leaving another son 
to succeed him as captain of the rock. He 
was then eighty-five years old. " I expect," 
wrote one of his sons to me at the time of 
the retirement, " he will feel the change 
severely, for at the age of eighty-five years 
one must suffer from such a radical change 
in their surroundings, from the wild, stormy 
coast of the Atlantic to the peaceful quiet of 
an inland village." 

The three light-keepers of Matinicus went 



78 LIFE ON MA TINICUS ROCK 

to spend their remaining days in a quiet vil- 
lage of Plymouth County, Massachusetts, 
where there is no sea nor any lighthouse 
lamp. But there they missed their old fel- 
lowship with the ocean. The expectation 
which the son had expressed to me concern- 
ing his father became prophetic of the whole 
family ; and before twelve months had passed, 
they removed to a town which looks upon 
"the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea." 




OLD ROADS NEAR BUZZARD'S BAY 




OLD ROADS NEAR BUZZARD'S BAY. 



These roads have a history. Long before 
EngHshmen had arrived at Plymouth, they 
were the foot trails of Indians traversing the 
great forest which stretched from the ocean 
to the site of the Providence Plantations ; 
the colonists used them as cattle-paths, by 
which their herds were driven to winter 
grazing in the meadows bordering Buzzard's 
Bay ; then they were bridle-paths, for the 
usual mode of traveling was on horseback ; 
then they became cart-roads, 

" winding, as old roads will, 
Here to a ferry, and there to a mill." 

At last they were adopted as the highways 
of a town. 

The vines and flowers hedging these roads 
have probably been reproducing themselves 
in the same places from time immemorial. 



82 OLD ROADS NEAR BUZZARD'S BA Y 

Mats of wild cranberries have always covered 
the banks near the ruts, and little blossoms 
of various colors have always lifted their 
heads in the dusty wayside grass. Every 
summer I have seen those thickets of wild 
syringas in flower; those elderberries have 
hung their purple clusters for the wine- 
makers annually, and the tall witheberry 
bushes have not failed to turn their fruits 
from green to red, and from red to blue, 
whether the traveler has admired them or 
not. 

Some of these old roads wander through 
long reaches of pine woods, where jungles of 
ferns are growing, and deep layers of brown 
needles are spread, and heaps of lops and 
tops are lying as they were left by wood- 
cutters. The stillness of these woods makes 
you pause ; the song of a bird is seldom 
heard in them ; and the only sound that you 
catch is a soft, incessant murmur of the top- 
most branches, which you may fancy to be 
the hushing whisper of Silence. The roads 
pass clumps of white birches leaning over 
old stone walls, and curiously over-run with 
grape-vines. They pass old guide - posts 
which have stood up and contradicted each 



OLD ROADS NEAR BUZZARD'S BAY 83 

other about the distances to Plymouth and 
Sandwich and Mattapoiset, until they have 
become gray. They pass ancient milestones, 
partly concealed in the bushes, on one of 
which are carved the symbols "4 M." But 
no one knows to what haven it would now 
direct the traveler. They pass along the 
edges of ponds into which alewives come 
from the sea every spring, to cast their 
spawn. They pass low farm-houses which 
face to the south, no matter which way the 
road runs. 

Some of these houses are very ancient ; a 
large square chimney rises from each, and 
the chimney is the centre of the family 
life. One of the housekeepers told me that 
she had put seventeen pies to bake of a 
morning in the great chimney oven. On 
summer days house doors, barn doors, and 
wood-shed doors are wide open ; there are 
herds of handsome cows in clover fields 
near by, and broods of hens are dusting 
themselves in the road ; no other life is to 
be seen. The silence and sunshine of sum- 
mer cover houses and fields. How delight- 
ful this silence is ! As I drive along, it is 
broken by the tones of an organ in a farm- 



84 OLD ROADS NEAR BUZZARD'S BAY 

house, and I hear two voices singing the 
world-traveled ballad of Annie Rooney : — 

" She 's my sweetheart, I 'm her beau, 
She 's my Annie, I 'm her Joe ! " 

An old road leads me to diked meadows 
by the bay, where salt hay is now harvested 
by farmers whose ancestors were cutting the 
meadows when George the Second was king. 
Another passes Hamlen's Corners, where, in 
the year 1739, lived the deacon whom the 
Wareham Church called up to inquire " how 
he had disposed of ye contributions." There 
is a piece of an old road called Briggs Lane, 
and there stand the old houses once occupied 
by the family which, in olden times, gave 
to the thoroughfare its name ; but Betsey 
Briggs, the last of her line, was dust long 
ago. There is another piece of an old road 
which is known as Happy Alley, so called, I 
may suppose, because it is skirted on each 
side by ancient graveyards, where briars and 
blackberry vines grow easily. On another 
road I catch, through the trees, the glimmer 
of a large pond, on which one may troll for 
black bass. Except the road which passes 
through the woods near it, and the tracks by 
which horses have been turned down to the 



OLD ROADS NEAR BUZZARD'S BAY 85 

water, there is no indication that man has 
ever been on its shore. A hundred and fifty 
years ago there were tilled fields where the 
forest stands, and the windows of the farm- 
house looked upon the water. Now there is 
no vestige of house or family ; but the pond 
perpetuates the farmer's name. 

Some of the old houses on these roads 
look like real homes ; the long, low roof 
spreads out to a broad base, as does an old 
motherly hen spread herself to cover her 
brood with her wings. Bare-footed and bare- 
headed children, dressed in red frocks or 
blue trousers, who, with a finger in the 
mouth, look shyly at me as I come near, and 
run in through the open door as if to seek a 
place of safety, are the broods that find 
homes under these peaceful roofs. Some- 
times the windows of these old houses give 
a quaint impression to me as I pass them. 
Their small panes, like little eyes in the sun- 
light, seem to wink at mc ; the irregular 
lines of their sills, curving down to the cor- 
ners like a lower lip, seem to pout at me ; a 
low dormer, half way down the slope of the 
roof, seems to lift its sleepy lid to see who I 
am ; and through a little square hole under 



86 OLD ROADS NEAR BUZZARD'S BAY 

the peak of the gable, which is covered by 
one small pane of glass, an eye seems to be 
watching me until I am out of sight. 

Occasionally on my rides I meet a doctor 
rushing along in a sulky, his box of drugs 
at his feet ; then I meet a poor farmer who 
is eking out his income by peddling dried 
herrings ; then I encounter families from old 
homesteads going soberly to a clambake on 
the bay shore, in springless wagons floored 
with straw. One day I met on the road a 
man from Boston peddling parlor organs ; he 
had two in his wagon, and he stopped me 
and asked if I wanted " to buy an organ." 
Often have I pulled off into a thicket at the 
roadside to let pass a large wagon crowded 
with women and children who were going to 
the cranberry bogs, where they will crawl on 
hands and knees to reap the fruit, and will 
receive ten cents for each six-quart measure 
of it turned over to the owner. Everybody 
in this region who owns anything appears to 
own a cranberry bog ; the store-keeper owns 
one ; the blacksmith owns one ; the oyster- 
man owns one ; even the peddler owns one. 

Many of these old roads are bounded by 
rude stone walls, which were piled up more 



OLD ROADS NEAR BUZZARD'S BAY 87 

than two centuries ago, when the settlers 
made their fields by cutting down forests and 
digging out boulders with which they con- 
structed these boundaries. Although the 
forest has overrun the fields, these walls re- 
main, 

" Pathetic monuments of vanished men." 

I drove across the Woonkinco River, and 
ascending a hill I came to a fork near which 
stood a house in a field of dwarf oaks. The 
front door was open. Pulling up my horse, 
I hailed : — 

" Does this road lead to Plymouth ? " 

A stout woman came to the door, and 
looked at me. She wore a green calico gown, 
and a broad-brim straw hat such as men 
wear in hay-fields. 

" Yes ! Both on 'em," she said ; " but 
Cap'en Savery, he goes Agawame way, — 
right ahead ! " 

I know Captain Savery. He commands a 
lobster cart. Every Tuesday, for more than 
twenty years, he has been driving it to Ware- 
ham with a load of boiled lobsters from Sol 
Valler's at Ship Pond, That is a little fish- 
ing hamlet on the seacoast of Plymouth, 
where a narrow strip of beach separates the 



88 OLD ROADS NEAR BUZZARD'S BAY 

sea from a small pond, in which were found 
the remains of a ship driven by a storm at 
some unknown time across the beach. The 
woman cautioned me that I was sure to go 
astray unless I followed the course which 
the veteran lobster-man is accustomed to 
steer through the Plymouth woods. 

It was a sunny day in August. There had 
been no rain for nearly a month. Between 
the tracks of the road clumps of purple 
wood-asters were struggling for life, and as 
my horse shambled along, a continuous cloud 
of dust arose behind the wheels, and was 
scattered over ferns and huckleberry bushes 
by the wayside. A green marsh in the cen- 
tre of an old field, and a small pond covered 
with lily pads were pleasing contrasts to 
the brown and weedy grasses surrounding 
them. 

I came to a long row of small, uninhabited 
houses. Fifty years ago they were bright 
red houses filled by industrious families, who 
had their church and their school near by. 
Time has sagged the doors, toppled the chim- 
neys, and made gray and shabby these rem- 
nants of homes. Passing these I turned into 
the street of Asrawame villasfe. The river 



OLD ROADS NEAR BUZZARD'S BAY 89 

runs furiously through the broken gates of a 
dam, on its course to Buzzard's Bay, and 
near it are spread the ruins of a large iron 
mill, which in its day gave prosperity to the 
village and a living to the people who inhab- 
ited those little red houses. Now the neigh- 
borhood is silent. Its homesteads have been 
abandoned ; the blacksmith's shop, the mill's 
store, the boarding-house, the tavern, once a 
part of the general activity, are fast falling 
into decay. So, too, is the old-fashioned 
manor-house, which is separated from the 
road by a little park of elm -trees, surrounded 
by a broken-down picket fence. I turned 
up to it to look at the portrait of a large 
black bass which the iron-master took from 
a pond in Plymouth woods thirty years ago, 
and sketched on the wall of its portico. 

Half way on the road from the head of 
Buzzard's Bay to Plymouth, in a wooded 
vale, lies a beautiful lake called Half-way 
Pond. A guide-post stands on a corner of 
the village street, and, pointing into the 
woods, says : " Half-way Pond 8 miles." I 
followed its guidance, and drove away into 
the woods. The road was heavy with sand, 
and hedged by thick bushes. Soon I noticed 



go OLD ROADS NEAR BUZZARD'S BAY 

that the sand had disappeared and pine 
needles covered the way. In a short time 
the pine needles were passed, and the road 
became merely two wheel-tracks with young 
pines and oaks standing between them. As 
I advanced, these became larger, bending 
stiffly as the wagon's body swept over them. 
Suddenly I came upon a boy with a fish- 
pole and a string of speckled trout. I asked 
him : — 

"Where does this road go } " 

He guessed " it don't go nowhere," with 
an air of scorn at my question. 

A little beyond this encounter, I came 
upon a man surveying to lay out a cranberry 
bog. I said to him : "I 've lost the road." 

" I guess you have," he replied ; "but you 
can follow round and get into it after a 
while." 

There was now no sign of travel except a 
foot-path through the bushes. At a knoll 
the path was divided. I turned my horse to 
the right, because I saw an open space in 
that direction and the glimmer of a line of 
sand, which I concluded to be the road. 
The path led me down to the broad sand- 
covered dyke of a cranberry farm. It was 



OLD ROADS NEAR BUZZARD'S BAY 9 1 

impossible to go further. I dismounted, and 
lifted the wagon around ; then, carefully re- 
tracing the way I had come, I reached at 
last the guide-post at the corner of the vil- 
lage street. Then I drove to " the store " to 
inquire about the road to Half-way Pond. 

" Can you tell me about it 1 " I asked of a 
cheerful, broad-bosomed woman who stood 
behind the counter. 

" Dear me ! " she answered in a distressed 
tone, " it 's dreadful crooked. Just as soon 
tell ye as not, but don't believe I can." 

" I can," said a small boy who was listen- 
ing, " if you '11 give me a pencil." 

He took up a box cover, and drew a line 
up and down it, then a line parallel, then a 
line crossing both, then lines curving away 
from all the lines. 

" That 's the way the road goes," said he, 
following one of the lines with the pencil. 
" When you git here, that fork '11 lead you 
to Federal Furnace. Keep on by this cor- 
ner, and look out there for a cedar swamp. 
Here you '11 see some cranberry bogs ; and 
when you git here, don't turn into that road, 
'cause it goes to Zekel's Pond. You '11 see a 
white rag tied to a pine-tree. You go by it, 



92 OLD ROADS NEAR BUZZARD'S BAY 

and you '11 come to an oak with a shingle 
nailed on it ; then keep straight ahead, mis- 
ter, all the time, and I guess you '11 git 
there." 

" I guess I '11 give it up," said I. " I '11 
drive in some other direction." 




A DAY ON THE SHORE 




A DAY ON THE SHORE 



It was the Fourth of July ; there were no 
great guns nor brazen bells to usher in the 
day, but only the songs of birds in the elms 
and apple-trees, and the lusty shouts of a 
fancy rooster that lords it over our barnyard 
domain. Now and then a rustic near Country 
Bridge fired off a musket. In the soft morn- 
ing air its sound resembled the explosion of 
a paper bag. The farm was silent and de- 
serted, although ripe grass stood waiting for 
the scythe, and yesterday's hay was still out- 
spread. You could not have hired a laborer 
to rake it up at ten dollars a day, for all the 
men had gone down the bay to celebrate the 
Fourth. 

As our farm-house was filled with guests 
from the city we decided to celebrate the 
day by a clambake on the shore. So, on 
the evening before, I drove over to a little 



96 A DAY ON THE SHORE 

hamlet of old houses lying on the road to the 
beach, to hire a clam-digger. The houses 
are occupied by unambitious people who fish 
or farm as the fancy takes them, and do not 
trouble themselves with thoughts about the 
morrow. All kinds of labor " kind o' goes 
agin " their convictions. The houses stand 
on the edge of an oak thicket where roads 
from the back country meet and fork away 
toward the bay, and at the fork stands a small 
dilapidated house having one story and one 
door. On its gable end, facing you as you 
approach, is always sitting a large crow ; 
hke Poe's raven, which was forever sitting 
" on the pallid bust of Pallas " just above his 
chamber door. Children long ago named 
this house the Crow Hotel, and in younger 
days they felt a dread of it as they rode past 
on their way to the beach ; for through its 
always open door could be seen signs of that 
wretchedness which is likely to make mischief 
in a neighborhood. Strung along the road 
just beyond are other houses of the settle- 
ment. No fences separate them from the 
land which they occupy ; as it was easier for 
the families to gather their firewood from the 
fences, while these lasted, than to go a few 
steps farther into the forest to get it. 



A DAY ON THE SHORE 97 

I pulled up my horse in front of a house 
before which several barefooted boys were 
grouped, each one trying in turn to jump 
farthest from a standpoint into the road; 
marking the spot where the jump lands him 
with a scratch made by his big toe in the 
sand. They stopped their sport and stared 
at me when I told them that I wanted to 
hire a man to dig clams. 

"Dun know where you'll git him," was 
their opinion. 

But I succeeded in finding one ; and it was 
interesting to discover that his name and 
pedigree came from a passenger in the May- 
flower. He agreed to dig three bushels of 
clams at low tide in the morning, to make 
the bake, and be at our service for the day ; 
the entire consideration being three dollars. 

Immediately after breakfast on the morn- 
ing of the Fourth, preparations for the 
picnic are begun. Baskets are filled with 
desirable things from the pantry and oven, 
demijohns are filled with fresh water, bathing- 
suits and towels are sorted and made into 
packages. These things are stowed away in 
two large wagons, to each of which a span of 
horses is harnessed. 



98 A DAY ON THE SHORE 

At noon we lock the house, crowd into the 
wagons, and drive away. We ride through 
the woods and snuff the fragrant odors which 
a warm sun is distilling from pine trees. 
Along the roadsides sweetbriar roses are 
blooming. Children are allowed to jump out 
of the wagons to break off clusters of ripen- 
ing blueberries, and to pick wild cranberry 
blossoms or laurel flowers with which to 
adorn their straw hats. Now the root of a 
big tree bulging in the road gives us a heavy 
jounce as the wheels pass over it ; then a 
deep rut catches the wheels and we are all 
thrown against each other. These things 
are made sport of as we drive on and find 
them repeated. After a half hour's journey 
we pass the house on whose gable the crow 
is perched ; then we pass mounds covered 
with moss, through which peep out bleached 
clam-shells, which are supposed to be rem- 
nants of clambakes enjoyed by Indians cen- 
turies ago ; then a short drive brings us to 
the bay shore, where we find our Mayflower 
man awaiting us under the pine trees, having 
all the materials at hand for the bake. 

The horses are now unharnessed and tied 
to trees, the wagons are rolled into shady 



A DAY ON THE SHORE 99 

places and unloaded, the guests lounge along 
the beach to some cool retreat where they 
may read a novel or quietly watch the yachts 
and fishing-boats that are going up and down 
the bay. The children take off shoes and 
stockings and are soon paddling on the edge 
of the water ; or digging little canals and 
cisterns into which the tide creeps ; or pick- 
ing up snails, tiny crabs, and scallop shells ; 
or building sand castles, to be washed away 
by the ripples which the south wind sends 
to shore. 

In the mean time our man is making the 
bake. A large, pan-shaped hole has been 
scooped out and carefully lined with stones. 
On these he builds a fire, heaps it high with 
dry wood, keeping it in full glow until the 
stones have become red hot. Then he clears 
away the fire, removes the embers, sweeps 
off the ashes, and upon the clean, hot stones 
he spreads a cover of mossy rockweeds, just 
gathered from the bay. Over this he spreads 
the three bushels of clams ; these he covers 
with long sea-grass, sloped up in a heap 
which confines all the heat and steam arising 
from the stones. The clams are cooked in 
twenty minutes ; the oven is opened on the 



loo A DAY ON THE SHORE 

leeward side, and all hands are summoned to 
help themselves. We burn our fingers with 
the hot shells, as each layer of clams is un- 
covered, and we are careful not to spill the 
hot juice as we press the shells open and with 
our fingers take out the delicious morsels. 

From a tent where bathing-suits have been 
put on, there is now a run to the water ; and 
while some jump in, others recline on the 
beach to watch the bathers ; children are 
wetting their ankles with a scream ; girls are 
splashing in the shallows and incessantly 
shrieking ; bolder boys are diving off into the 
depths ; and the city belles ! . . . 

The sight of belles in bathing-dresses easily 
destroys one's respect for the maxim that 
beauty unadorned is adorned the most. But 
she who now sits on the sand and laughs at 
the uncomely appearance of her comrades 
in the bath, may be seen, some other day, 
emerging from it as they are now ; — 

" Her hair drooped round her pallid cheeks, 
Like seaweed round a clam." 



OLD COLONY WITCH STORIES 




OLD COLONY WITCH STORIES 



Many a New England village has had its 
witch, its haunted house, its graveyard ghost, 
and its goblin stories. Its children have 
been afraid to go to bed in the dark, and are 
afraid now, lest "the Boogars" catch them. 
These mysterious creatures are supposed to 
haunt the darkness of bed-chambers and to 
live by day in some obscure cubby-hole in 
the garret. The moral lessons for which 
their pretended existence is used are thus 
expressed by the Hoosier poet : — 

" You better mind yer parents, and yer teachers fond and 
dear, 
An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's 

tear, 
An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about, 
Er the gobble-uns '11 git you 
Ef you 
Don't 

Watch 

Outf" 



104 OLD COLONY WLTCH STORIES 

There are two women, descended from one 
of the English settlers of the Plymouth 
colony, who tell witch stories and believe 
in the existence of witches, or of old women 
who can exercise a supernatural power over 
others. Their mother and grandmother, for 
they are sisters, held to the same supersti- 
tion. In their day a belief in the working of 
evil influences was almost universal with the 
lower classes of people in the county, and 
witchwood was gathered under peculiar cir- 
cumstances to be kept as a shield against 
the witcheries of mumbling and wrinkled 
hags. Farmers were then particular to cut 
their cordwood "on the decrease of the 
moon ; " a death in the family was told to the 
bees, and sometimes the hives were trimmed 
with crape, as if it were possible for the 
wandering spirit of the dead to come back to 
the homestead to get a supply of honey, if 
stinted of it in the last resting-place. Akin 
to this superstition was a custom prevalent 
in some English' colonies of burying a suicide 
in the cross-roads and driving a stake through 
the body, to prevent the spirit from coming 
back to vex the community. 

" After you pass Carver Green on the old 



OLD COLONY WLTCH STORIES 105 

road from the bay to Plymouth," said one of 
these women, " you will see a green hollow 
in a field. It is Witches' Hollow, and is 
green in winter and summer, and on moonlit 
nights witches have been seen dancing in it 
to the music of a fiddle played by an old 
black man. I never saw them, but I know 
people who saw witches dancing there. In 
a small house near the hollow, a little old 
woman lived who was a witch ; she went by 
the name of Old Betty, and she danced on 
the green with the devil as a partner. There 
was an old man who lived in that neighbor- 
hood by himself ; he was kind to Betty, giv- 
ing her food and firewood. After a while he 
got tired of her and told her she must keep 
away. One day he caught her there and put 
her in a bag, and locked the bag in a closet, 
and put the key in his pocket, and went away 
to his work. While he was gone, she got out 
of the bag and unlocked the door. Then 
she got his pig, dog, cat, and rooster, put 
them into the bag, put the bag in the closet 
and hid herself. When the man came home 
the animals in the bag were making a dread- 
ful noise. * Ah, ha! Old Betty, there you 
are ! ' said the man. He took the bag and 



lo6 OLD COLONY WITCH STORIES 

dashed it on his doorstone, and the old wo- 
man laughed and cried out, ' You hain't killed 
Old Betty yet ! ' " 

Another story told by the old women was 
of two witches who lived in Plymouth woods, 
near the head of Buzzard's Bay, who never 
went out in the daytime ; but in the evening 
twilight they walked out "casting spells." 
They cast a spell on a boy, compelling him 
to follow them home. Putting him to bed in 
a lower room, they went up a ladder into the 
loft. At midnight the boy saw them come 
down the ladder, go to the oven, and take out 
a quahog shell. Each witch rubbed it be- 
hind her ears and said " Whisk ! " when each 
flew up the chimney. The boy got up and 
rubbed the shell behind his ears ; immedi- 
ately he went up the chimney and found him- 
self standing outdoors beside the witches, 
who were sitting astride black horses in the 
yard. On seeing the boy one of them dis- 
mounted, went into the house and returned 
with a " witch bridle " and a bundle of straw. 
She flung the bridle over the straw, and out 
of it came a pony. The boy was put on the 
pony's back, and away the three cantered 
across a large meadow, until they came to a 



OLD COLONY WLTCH STORIES 107 

brook. The witches cleared the brook at a 
leap ; but the boy, when he cleared it, said 
to his pony, " A pretty good jump for a lousy 
calf ! " Those words broke the spell ; the 
pony vanished, the boy stood alone with the 
bridle and the straw. He now ran after the 
witches, and soon he came to an old deserted 
house in which he heard the sound of fiddles. 
He peeped in a window and saw a black man 
fiddling, and the two witches and other old 
women dancing around him. Frightened, he 
ran down the road until he came to a farm- 
house. He knocked on the door, was ad- 
mitted, and the next day the farmer carried 
him to his parents. 

The old women who told the witch stories 
said that their grandmother had been person- 
ally acquainted with two witches, in the last 
century. One of these was named Deb- 
orah Borden, called at that day " Deb Bur- 
den," who was supposed to have caused a 
great deal of mischief in Wareham, Roches- 
ter, and Middleboro. It was thought to be 
necessary for farmers to keep in her good 
graces lest she should cause a murrain to 
come upon cattle, lest the rye refuse to head, 
and the corn to ear. She was a weaver of 



io8 OLD COLONY WITCH STORIES 

cloth and rag carpets. Woe to the unlucky 
housewife who worried Deb or hurried her 
at her looms ! I will let one of the sisters 
relate her story of this sorceress. It is not 
probable that the relator had ever heard of 
Robert Burns' story of Tam O'Shanter and 
his gray mare Meg ; but a running brook 
filled the same place in that story and in 
this : — 

" Once my grandmother had a web of 
cloth in Deb's looms, so she sent my mother 
and a girl named Phebe after it. The two 
girls were just as intimate as finger and 
thumb. They went to Deb's house and told 
her what my grandmother said, and it made 
her mad, 'cause she did n't like to be hurried. 
Near her back door was a tree full of red 
apples, and Phebe said, ' Won't you please 
give me an apple .-• ' and Deb said, ' Drat 
you ! No, I won't ! ' My mother was n't 
afraid, so she took an apple for Phebe and 
one for herself, and she said to Deb : — 

" ' I ain't afraid of ye, ye old witch ! ' 

'"Ye ain't.?' Deb screamed; 'then I'll 
make ye afraid afore ye git home ! ' 

" They had a piece of woods to go through ; 
in the middle of it there was a pair of bars. 



OLD COLONY WITCH STORIES 109 

and on the other side of the bars there was 
a brook. Suddenly they heard a roaring and 
they saw a black bull coming. 'Oh !' said 
Phebe, * Captain Besse's bull has got out and 
he will get us ; ' so they ran for the bars. 
They got through them and across the brook, 
when the bull leaped the bars and stopped on 
the edge of the brook and roared ; then my 
mother knew it was old Deb Burden who was 
in the bull to frighten the girls, because the 
brook stopped the critter. Witches can't 
cross running water, you know. 

" The girls reached home dreadfully fright- 
ened, and told what had happened. ' Never 
mind,' said my grandfather; ' I '11 fix Debbie ! ' 
When she brought home the cloth, he came 
into the house and slipped behind her as she 
sat by the fire, and put a darning-needle 
through her dress and fastened her to the 
chair. Well, she sot ; and every once in a 
while she said, ' I must go ; ' but she couldn't 
stir ; she would be still for a while and then 
say, ' Why, I must go and tend my fire ; ' but 
she could n't stir no more 'n a milestone ; 
and he kept her in the chair all day, and then 
he pulled out the needle and let her go. 
* Scare my gal agin, ye old witch ! ' he said. 



no OLD COLONY IVITCH STORIES 

You know witches can't do anything when 
steel is nigh, and that was the reason the 
darning-needle held her. 

" Once Deb came to Thankful Haskell's 
in Rochester, and sot by the fire, and her 
daughter, fourteen year old, was sweeping 
the room, and she put the broom under Deb's 
chair. You can't insult a witch more than 
that, 'cause a broomstick is what they ride 
on when they go off on mischief. Deb was 
mad as a March hare, and she cussed the 
child. Next day the child was taken sick, 
and all the doctors gin her up, and they sent 
for old Dr. Bemis of Middleboro ; he put on 
his spectacles and looked at her, and said he, 
'This child is bewitched; go, somebody, and 
see what Deb is up to,' Mr. Haskell got on 
his horse and rode to Deb's house ; there 
was nobody in but a big black cat ; this was 
the devil, and witches always leave him to 
take care of the house when they go out. Mr. 
Haskell looked around for Deb, and he saw 
her down to the bottom of the garden by 
a pool of water, and she was making images 
out of clay and sticking in pins. As quick as 
he saw her he knew what ailed the child ; so 
he laid his whip around her shoulders good. 



OLD COLONY WITCH STORIES m 

and said, ' Stop that, Deb, or you shall be 
burnt alive ! ' She whimpered, and the 
black cat came out and growled and spread 
his tail, but Mr. Haskell laid on the whip, 
and at last she screamed, * Your young one 
shall git well ! ' and that child began to 
mend right off. The black cat disappeared 
all of a suddint and Mr. Haskell thought the 
earth opened and took him in." 

" Moll Ellis was called the witch of Plym- 
outh," said the other sister, taking up the 
story-telling. " She got a grudge agin Mr. 
Stevens, a man my grandfather worked for, 
and three years runnin' she cast a spell on 
the cattle and horses, and upsot his hay in a 
brook. My grandfather drove and Stevens 
was on the load, and when they came to the 
brook the oxen snorted, and the horses reared 
and sweat, and they all backed and the hay 
was upsot into the brook. One day Stevens 
said, ' I '11 not stand this ; I '11 go and see 
what Moll Ellis is about.' So he went up to 
her house, and there she lay on her back 
a-chewin' and a-mutterin' dretful spell words, 
and as quick as Stevens saw her he knew 
what ailed his cattle ; and he walked right 
up to the bed, and he told Moll, ' If you ever 



112 OLD COLONY WITCH STORIES 

upset another load of hay I '11 have you hung 
for a witch.' She was dretful scart, and 
promised she never would harm him again. 
When she was talking, a little black devil, 
that looked just like a bumblebee, flew into 
the window and popped down her throat ; 
't was the one she had sent out to scare the 
cattle and horses. When Moll died, they 
could n't get the coffin out the door because 
it had a steel latch ; they had to put it out 
the window." 

Whether Moll was in the habit of using 
the window to pass in and out of her dwell- 
ing-house in her lifetime, these women could 
not tell ; but they firmly believed in Moll, 
and in witches, devils, and familiar spirits. 
That belief, under various names, still flour- 
ishes with certain classes of people in eastern 
Massachusetts. At Onset I have heard them 
speak of " manifestations " received from the 
spirits of the first settlers on the shores of 
Buzzard's Bay, and I have read in a Bristol 
County newspaper that a mysterious hearse 
had been seen driven by a headless man 
along a road in the woods. 

In regard to such stories I must say, as 
Mr. Addison said after relating the story of 



OLD COLONY WITCH STORIES 113 

Glaphyra : " If any man thinks these facts 
incredible, let him enjoy his opinion to him- 
self ; but let him not endeavor to disturb 
the belief of others who by instances of this 
nature are excited to the study of virtue." 




A THANKSGIVING 




A THANKSGIVING 



In December, 162 1, Edward Winslow, of 
the Mayflower company, wrote a letter from 
Plymouth to a " louing and old friend " in 
London, saying : — 

" We set the last Spring some twentie Acres 
of Indian Corne, and sowed some six acres of 
Barley & Pease and according to the manner 
of the Indians, we manured our ground with 
Herrings or rather Shadds, which we have in 
great abundance and take with great ease at our 
doores. Our Corne did proue well & God be 
praysed, and our Early indifferent good, but our 
Pease not worth the gathering, they came up 
very well, and blossomed, but the Sunne parched 
them in the blossome ; our harvest being gotten 
in, our Governour sent foure men on fowling, so 
that we might after a more speciall manner re- 
ioyce together after we gathered the fruit of our 
labours ; they foure in one day killed as many 



Il8 A THANKSGIVING 

fowle as with a little helpe beside served the 
Company almost a weeke." 

This rejoicing together "after a more spe- 
ciall manner " was the first Thanksgiving 
Day in New England. But in 1621 it was 
not called by the name it now bears, nor did 
its circumstances resemble those which now 
surround it. Then, frightful mysteries were 
lurking on the wooded horizon of the camp 
at Plymouth. Now, there looms upon the 
horizon of our Thanksgiving Day nothing 
more frightful than an enormous turkey. 
There were no cheerful firesides nor jovial 
guests in the Plymouth huts ; and although 
the exiles ate the partridges and wild turkeys 
which the " foure men on fowling " had shot 
in the Plymouth woods for their Thanksgiv- 
ing dinners, the eaters were not free from 
anxiety and discomfort ; and imagination 
may picture the dyspepsias which haunted 
them after that "almost a weeke" of feast- 
ing. 

It is something to rejoice over that no 
matter who is the President, nor what politi- 
cal party holds the key to the treasury, nor 
what taxes oppress the people, the whirligig 
of time is sure to bring in a Thanksgiving 



A THANKSGIVING 119 

for everybody, on the last Thursday in No- 
vember. Men may say that they are too 
busy, and women may say that they have 
nothing to wear ; circumstances may change 
and friends may change with them ; but 
here comes this most hospitable day of the 
year, unchanged in its spirit by any changes 
of time. Shops are shut, factories are silent, 
the iron door of discounts and deposits is 
closed, the Ship of State is hove to and all 
hands are piped to dinner. Only the ball 
clubs, with their devotees, are left out of 
doors on Thanksgiving Day. 

To see a picture of the genuine Thanks- 
giving Day, you may send your memory 
back to the old homestead from which, per- 
haps, you wandered long ago ; or you may 
go with me in imagination to a New England 
village. 

A long sermon has been preached in the 
village meeting-house, in which the preacher 
has exhorted the people to render thanks to 
the Supreme Ruler, the giver of every good 
and perfect gift ; to love the country and its 
institutions ; to respect all those who are set 
in lawful authority over them ; and, finally, 
to prepare for that eternal kingdom which 



I 



1 20 A THANKSGIVING 

is to come. The sermon is ended ; the 
meeting-house is closed, and the village street 
is soon deserted. 

On these stone-walled farms fragrant barns 
are preserving the wealth of a harvest closely 
gathered. In her ample stall stands the old 
gray mare, whinnying for an extra quart of 
corn, and whisking her tail in thanksgiving 
that fly-time is ended. The brindled cows 
poke their mild faces over the barnyard gates, 
chewing unconsciously the cud of thanksgiv- 
ing. Chanticleer, thankful for this extra- 
meal-giving day, and regardless of the fate of 
his progeny who are smoking in the chicken 
pie, mounts the highest peak of the wood- 
pile, and with lusty crow announces himself 
the undaunted cock of all creation. 

From those great, square, brick chimneys 
curls up peacefully the smoke of thanksgiv- 
ing kitchens. All out-door work has been 
laid aside, and the juvenile Yankee nation 
has gathered indoors, where it is kicking up 
its heels like a young colt, shouting, "Be- 
gone, dull care ! " and bidding grandmother 
" Hurry up those pumpkin pies ! " 

The restless Jonathan is at home to-day ; 
he dismisses his dignity with a yawn of relief 



A THANKSGIVING 121 

as he finds himself free from his stocks in 
New York, his grain in Chicago, and his 
plantations in Louisiana. He romps with 
the children to-day in the hay-loft, and builds 
blocks of houses for them on the sitting- 
room floor. The London clock in its tall 
mahogany case, standing in a corner as it 
stood in the old colonial times, whirrs off the 
noisy hours ; and grandfather sits at the 
fireside, tapping his snuff-box, and waving 
gleefully his red bandanna handkerchief. 
He enters into all the frolics of the grand- 
children, and his feelings say : — 

" Play on, play on ; I am with you there, 

In the midst of your merry ring ; 
I can feel the thrill of the daring jump, 

And the rush of the breathless swing. 
I hide with you in the fragrant hay, 

And I whoop the smothered call, 
And my feet slip up on the seedy floor, 

And I care not for the fall." 

That parchment framed upon the wall of the 
sitting-room is a commission from " George 
the Second, by the Grace of God, of Great 
Britain, France, and Ireland, King," appoint- 
ing this grandfather's grandfather " to be 
one of Our Justice to keep Our Peace in 
the County of Plymouth within Our Province 



122 A THANKSGIVING 

of Massachusetts Bay, in New England." 
It is dated "this 26th day of June, 1755." 
From that day to this the odor of Thanks- 
giving Day has annually filled the old house 
from cellar to garret, as it is filled now. 
There is a savory sense of turkeys browning 
on the spits of tin ovens ; of chickens crusted 
with hot pastry ; of beans baking in dark 
pots of earthen ; of mince pies steaming 
with spices and cider ; the very atmosphere 
smacks of the goodness of Thanksgiving 
Day. 

After we have given thanks for all the 
mercies and blessings which the day has 
unfolded to our memories, we should not for- 
get to give thanks for the day itself, — the 
most delightful episode in the circle of the 
seasons. 

Blow the wind from what quarter it will, 
this is the day of all the year when we should 
heave the deep-sea lead of memory into the 
past, take new bearings and departures, and 
begin the reckonings of a new voyage. It is 
the day when we should be on good terms 
with all flesh, especially with ourselves — 
and the cook. It is the day when we should 
scare up all the celestial turkeys roosting in 



A THANKSGIVING 123 

our hearts, and send one to everybody in the 
neighborhood who is poorer than we are. 
To-day we should grate off the rinds of our 
selfish dispositions ; we should baste our 
worldly wisdom with large spoonfuls of the 
drippings of humility ; we should lard the 
tenderloin of our affections with the fat of 
benevolence ; we should stuff the breast of 
our vanities with a dressing of knowledge 
seasoned with godliness ; we should rejoice 
that, although we have been broiled on the 
gridiron of adversity ninety and nine times, 
we are spared to see Thanksgiving Day with 
a clear conscience, a thankful heart, and a 
rousing appetite. And we are determined 
that nothing shall vex the tranquillity of our 
Thanksgiving but an endless grace or an 
invincible "drumstick." 

All hail to Thanksgiving Day, which has 
been an annual visitor at our firesides for 
many generations ! I say, as Patrick Henry 
said of the Revolution, " Let it come ! I re- 
peat it, sir. Let it come ! Although every 
gale that sweeps from the North may bring 
to our ears the clash of resounding" — 
knives and forks, let it come for its associa- 
tions of home and kindred, for the memories 



124 A THANKSGIVING 

it preserves and the hopes it creates. And 
as often as it comes, let our thanks be sin- 
cere, our charities unbounded, our armchairs 
capacious, our turkeys well cooked. Then, 
after the cloth is removed, we may each 
stand up and declare, with grateful satisfac- 
tion, " The Duke hath dined ! " 




SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 




SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 



The inhabitants of the menagerie have a 
doctor who is at home at all hours of the 
day. He has his prescriptions, his surgical 
instruments, and his professional anxieties. 
He looks into the eye of the lion, watches 
the appetite of the leopard, notes the ner- 
vousness of the panther, the despondency of 
the bear, the shivering fits of the monkey, 
the gluttonous habit of the ostrich, the pal- 
ing lips of the seal. And although he can- 
not count the pulses of his wild patients by 
the tick of his watch, nor examine their 
tongues with that openness which a medical 
man always desires, he can nevertheless form 
a pretty good estimate of the daily health of 
each individual in this primeval community. 

The doctor keeps a professional diary, 
which he allowed me to read. It contains a 
record of the sicknesses in the menagerie, of 



128 SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 

the symptoms of patients, the treatment, and 
the result. For example : " January 20, 
Panther Joe taken sick, very feverish, con- 
tinual vomiting, gave him sugar and water." 
The next record of Joe's illness was written 
on the ist of February: "Panther Joe still 
down, has taken no food, gave him tartar 
emetic ; threw off considerable yellow fluid 
from stomach." The panther's illness con- 
tinues without abatement, and on the 6th 
of February the doctor wrote : " Panther Joe 
has eaten nothing yet, tried him with a bird, 
also with milk ; will take nothing but water." 
Poor Joe ! He is indeed very sick when he 
turns his nose away from a bird. But there 
now comes a change ; the fever leaves him, 
and a few days later it is recorded in the 
diary that Joe has eaten a little raw meat. 

A leopard gives birth to four cubs. Two 
days later she is found to be nervous and 
restless. She takes the cubs in her mouth, 
one after another, and carries them as she 
silently stalks around and around within her 
cage. She lays the cubs down, picks them 
up, then deposits them in a corner. Evi- 
dently she does not like the publicity of her 
position, and is longing 



SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 129 

" For a lodge in some vast wilderness, 
Some boundless contiguity of shade," 

whither she may retreat to enjoy her young 
ones, far away from the eyes of men. The 
doctor orders her cage to be covered with 
canvas so that no one can see her. One day 
she cHnches her teeth through two of the 
cubs, and kills them ; the remaining two are 
then removed from the cage to be fed from 
a nursing bottle. After a while they are 
given to a dog, who suckles them with her 
pups ; and by this care, and the occasional 
use of the nursing bottle, these two young 
leopards get on in the world. The doctor's 
record says that on the ninth day from birth 
one of the cubs opens an eye ; on the tenth 
day each cub has both eyes open ; on the 
twentieth day their canine and incisor teeth 
are cut ; on the fortieth day they begin to 
lap with their tongues. Now, as the dog 
will have nothing more to do with them, 
they are taken away and put on exhibition. 

One morning the doctor is called to a wolf 
which has been seized with fits. He treats 
it with a salt-water bath, bleeding, and salt ; 
the next day there is no improvement ; on 
the third day the wolf is seized by spasms, 



130 SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 

and dies. The inhabitants of the menagerie 
die of every disease that is known to man. 
It is recorded in the doctor's book that a 
young camel died of an enlargement of the 
heart ; that a rattlesnake died of a cancer in 
its mouth, which is a common disease of the 
serpent tribe. To a neighbor of mine in the 
city there were consigned, for sale, twenty 
boa constrictors, shipped from the banks of 
the Amazon River. When they were landed, 
three were found to have cancers in the 
mouth. An anaconda in the menagerie 
choked itself in an attempt to swallow a 
blanket ; an ostrich poisoned itself by swal- 
lowing copper pennies ; a beautiful toucan, 
from tropical America, swallowed a woman's 
hairpin, and died from ulceration. The 
brightest and most intelligent of these pris- 
oners, a Labrador seal, died in consequence 
of cruel tricks played upon it ; in its stomach 
were found " stones, nails, screws, shells, but- 
tons," which human barbarians had thrown 
to it. I find the record of a young alligator 
whose eyes were eaten out by turtles in the 
night ; of a peccary dying from tubercles in 
its lungs ; of a porcupine bursting a blood- 
vessel near the heart. Some of the inhabi- 



SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 131 

tants of the menagerie have died from glut- 
tony ; some from home-sickness ; some from 
duels fought with companions ; some from a 
long-continued debility, as a bear that ex- 
pired quietly in the night, from what men 
call "heart failure," or want of breath. An 
ocelot, restless and weary of confinement, 
" having retired, as it were, from business, and 
knowing not what to do, began to gnaw its 
tail ; the doctor ordered tar to be put on the 
end of it ; but the creature continued to 
gnaw, and in a few days had eaten the tail 
entirely off; then it died. 

The menagerie doctor does not put much 
faith in the use of drugs, and he finds it dif- 
ficult to administer them if his patient dis- 
likes them. It was only because a polar bear 
was fond of cod-liver oil that the doctor was 
allowed to administer it for a sore throat. 
All wild animals possess a power of healing 
their ordinary wounds by dressing with their 
tongues ; but when attacked by a disease, 
they can do nothing for themselves, and 
there is not much that the doctor can do for 
them. If they are sick unto death, they 
usually seek for a place of darkness and soli- 
tude in which to wait the event. 



132 SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 

The smaller animals are always trying to 
escape from confinement. Raccoons and 
foxes are frequently successful in attempts 
to run away ; their natural cunning helps 
them. One night four foxes scampered off. 
An Egyptian goose flew away, and a swan, 
attempting to follow the goose, struck its 
head against a telegraph wire, and fell dead ; 
an opossum got out of its cage in the night, 
and made its supper on a hawk and a turtle- 
dove ; an eagle broke a wire of its cage, and 
flew away to the mountains of freedom. 

Here are twelve elephants standing in a 
row, each chained by a hind leg to a post. 
The largest of these sagacious creatures is 
thirty years old, eleven feet high, and weighs 
twelve thousand pounds. They can drink 
water, bucket after bucket full, eat hay by 
the bale, and are fond of sweets, apples, and 
peanuts, which they are thankful to accept 
in small quantities from visitors ; they stand 
quietly with open mouths to play catcher to 
a child who pitches to them a little ball of 
corn-candy. An example of the sagacity of 
these creatures was noted in the Manchester 
Zoo. Near the stalls of the elephants were 
boxes containing biscuits, which could be 



SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 133 

released by a penny put into a slot. Some 
visitors occasionally gave to the eleiDhants a 
half penny, and as experience had taught 
them that this coin is of no value for obtain- 
ing biscuits, it was generally thrown back to 
the giver. One day a visitor gave the baby 
elephant a number of half pennies in succes- 
sion, each of which was thrown back as soon 
as received. Two half pennies were then 
given to the animal at the same time. His 
demeanor was immediately changed. He 
held the two coins in his trunk, rubbing them 
together, rocking from side to side, and seem- 
ing to be pondering deeply. At last he 
dropped them into the box together, and 
their combined weight gave him the desired 
biscuit. His joy was almost ludicrous. His 
big ears were expanded, and he gamboled 
about in a manner which exhibited the most 
extravagant delight. 

Notwithstanding its sagacity, an elephant 
may be easily frightened by a mouse. A 
keeper at the Bridgeport menagerie took a 
string having a slip-noose in its end, slipped 
it around the body of a mouse, and placed 
the mouse in front of an elephant. As soon 
as the elephant saw it he reared up in a 



134 SOCIETY IN THE MEXAGERIE 

fright, and tugged to get away from his 
chain. While the mouse was running around 
the circuit allowed by the string, the ele- 
phant watched it with expressions of terror ; 
then trembled, turned around, and screamed. 
The same experiment was tried, with similar 
results, on other elephants ; but when the 
mouse was placed before one who was an 
old resident of the menagerie, he put down 
his trunk near it, and blew it away in such a 
furious blast that the string was broken, and 
the mouse disappeared from sight. 

Here are lions " going about," but not 
"roaring," although it is evident that their 
only thought is for something to devour. 
They are fed once a day on raw meat ; but 
on Sunday they get nothing to eat. As the 
daily feeding hour draws near, they stop 
their perambulation of the cage, stand alert, 
and look over the heads of the visitors to a 
door through which will come the man who 
always brings their dinners. " Why don't 
that man come ? " they are evidently saying 
to themselves. As soon as they have eaten 
they will lie down and go to sleep. The 
tigers are not as sedate as the lions. While 
stalking with noiseless tread up and down 



SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 135 

the cage, their heads are turned frequently 
towards the open door with thoughts of din- 
ner-time ; sometimes they pause and raise 
themselves on hind legs to get a more ex- 
tended view through the door ; their steps 
become quicker and quicker as their impa- 
tience increases ; now they are standing still, 
purring against the bars, curling their tails, 
because they see the dinner-man coming. 

In their native jungle, tigers become man- 
eaters as soon as they have lost their fear of 
man. Then they are cunning enough to 
avoid all traps set for them ; and they are 
strong enough and bold enough to break into 
houses and carry off the inmates. In India 
the terror which a man-eating tiger causes 
has depopulated a village and put another in 
a state of siege, the inhabitants being afraid 
to go out to draw water from a stream which 
was but a short distance away. 

Lions and tigers are somewhat particular 
in washing themselves. They wet, with the 
tongue, the pad of a forefoot, and pass it to 
and fro, as if it were a sponge, over the face 
and behind the ears. The rest of the body 
they comb with their rough tongues. Their 
reception rooms — the cages in which visi- 



136 SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 

tors see them — are swept, and carpeted 
with sawdust in the morning before their 
majesties leave the sleeping apartments. 
When the connecting doors are drawn open, 
the beasts come out at their leisure to begin 
the day. They usually sleep late in the 
morning, and sometimes they come out with 
bounds and growls as if they had not passed 
a pleasant night. Here comes a tiger of 
Bengal, who probably has received a curtain 
lecture from her mate. She bounds out as 
soon as the door is open, stands erect and 
nervous, as if she wanted something to do, 
switches her tail, looks into each corner of 
the cage, and calls for her fellow to come 
forth, as if she desired him to "knock a 
chip " off her shoulder. When he appears 
she seems to be satisfied with his caress, lies 
down, rolls over on her back, folds her paws 
on her breast, and falls asleep, with the 
appearance of being the most harmless crea- 
ture in the world. A tiger sleeps sometimes 
in the attitude of a cat, with forefeet drawn 
under the body, and sometimes in the atti- 
tudes of a dog, resting the head on the fore- 
paws ; or stretched at full length on a side, 
the paws outspread. In another cage are 



SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 137 

two young leopards asleep, the head of one 
resting lovingly on a shoulder of the other ; 
and you think you would enjoy going into 
the cage to caress the little beauties. 

Every member of society in the menage- 
rie, whether young or old, is vicious at heart. 
The savage nature may be restrained while 
in confinement, but it is not eradicated. 
The lion and the lamb can never lie down 
together in menagerie cages. Even beauti- 
ful creatures, having mild eyes and gentle 
countenances, are not to be trusted. Deer 
are savage ; so is the antelope from India ; 
so is the little springbok, of elegant form, 
from South Africa. " You can't tell what 
they '11 do," said a keeper, " if you go near 
them." Therefore the keepers are always 
wary when entering cages ; and they never 
enter unless it is necessary to do so. A 
kangaroo seized its keeper on entering the 
cage, and pinioned him erect in its short fore- 
arms. With the claws of its powerful hind 
legs it would have ripped open the man's 
body by one blow, had he not known how to 
crowd the beast back into a corner, and ham- 
per its hind legs by a certain pressure, until 
opportunity came to escape from the embrace. 



138 SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 

" Those black panthers," said a keeper, " I 
raised from kittens, I used to go into their 
cage until they got grown ; then I quit. I 
saw they did n't want me in there any more. 
One of our men said he was n't afraid to go 
in, and he went ; and the panthers went for 
him. He died in about five minutes after 
we got him out of the cage." 

In the menagerie, social contact causes no 
irritation between individuals. This fact 
seems to mark a difference between the tem- 
peraments of wild animals and of men. The 
interest which they feel in each other's soci- 
ety was shown by the following incident in 
the Central Park Zoo : A hyena had given 
birth to twins, and after they had got well 
started in life it became necessary to clean 
out the cage. To do this the mother and 
young ones must be removed to an adjoining 
cage, and the father who is occupying it 
must be transferred to another place. When 
the transfer box was wheeled in, it attracted 
attention from the entire society. The hip- 
popotamuses retreated to their tank and 
snorted ; while the baby hippopotamus 
plunged under the water, and stayed there. 
The lions, tigers, and leopards showed their 



SOCIETY hV THE MENAGERIE 139 

interest, at first, by silent watchings ; after- 
wards they became furiously excited. The 
mother hyena pushed her babies into a cor- 
ner of the cage, and expressed her feelings 
in cries and barks. At last the father hyena 
went quietly into the box ; but when this 
was rolled away, the noise that followed it 
might be likened (in Milton's words) to "all 
hell broke loose." Every quadruped that 
saw what had been done roared in anger ; 
and it seemed as if 

" The universal host up sent 
A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond 
Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night." 

Here is a cage occupied by monkeys, 
where eating, sleeping, playing, and inquisi- 
tive works go on continually. It offers the 
most amusing spectacle in the menagerie. 
A mother monkey is washing her children. 
If one of them resists, she picks it up by the 
tail and cuffs it ; if one is sick, she holds it 
gently in her arms, and fondles it as a wo- 
man would fondle her child. The doctor's 
record shows that monkeys take cold easily, 
suffer from ulcerated sore throats, bronchitis, 
tuberculosis, and die of consumption, as do 
men and women. 



140 SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 

Mr. Crowley was a monkey (an African 
ape), whose resemblance to man gave him 
that name, and made him famous as long as 
he lived in the Central Park Zoo. He ate 
his daily meals while sitting in a chair at a 
table, using a knife and fork exactly as they 
are used by civilized people. He took soup 
with a spoon, wiped his lips with a napkin, 
and drank from a cup or tumbler held in his 
hand. He suddenly died of pneumonia. 
Sally, a famous ape of the London Zoo, who 
died from a disease of the lungs, behaved 
like a human being during her last illness. 
She came to the front of her cage to take 
medicine when told to do so ; and when she 
became so feeble that it was necessary for 
her to stay in the kennel, she reached out 
her hand to welcome the doctor whenever 
he approached. 

Man is likely to have a more intimate 
acquaintance with this apparent kinsman. 
There has been obtained, by means of a 
phonograph, evidence of the existence of 
speech in monkeys ; and an attempt is to be 
made to ascertain the meanings and modifi- 
cations of some of their labial sounds. Early 
one morning, as I was riding on the summit 



SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 141 

of the Bombay Ghauts near Mattaran, I saw 
ahead of me, in a field bordering the bridle- 
path, a large monkey seated on the ground 
and watching the gambols of half a dozen 
young ones. These were wrestling, jump- 
ing, and playing tag like boys and girls. As 
soon as the old monkey discovered me ap- 
proaching, she uttered a word which called 
all the children to her side.^ Motioning 
them to go behind her, as if for safety, she 
faced me while I passed by under inspection 
of the curious eyes of the family. Curiosity 
is as strong in monkeys as in men. They 
show as much curiosity about their visitors 
in the menagerie as the visitors show about 
them. Curiosity has caused a monkey to 
drag a chair across a room, and stand on it 
that he might reach a latch which he wanted 
to open, and to use sticks to pry open the 

^ " They talk with one another on a limited number of 
subjects, but in very few words, which they frequently re- 
peat if necessary. Their language is purely one of sounds, 
and while these sounds are accompanied by signs, as a 
rule, I think they are quite able to get along better with 
the sounds alone than with signs alone. The rules by 
which we may interpret the sounds of simian speech are 
the same as those by which we should interpret human 
speech." — The Speech of Monkeys, by R. L. Gamer. 



142 SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 

lid of a chest which he was curious to exam- 
ine. In the London Zoo a violin was played 
before a cage containing an orang-outang, 
who was ranked as the most intelligent 
member of the Zoo society. He seated him- 
self facing the player, and while chewing a 
straw, he gravely listened to the music, curi- 
ous to understand its meaning. " He looks 
just like our manager when a new piece is 
on ! " said the violinist, as he ended the sere- 
nade. 

The monkey's likeness to man is very ap- 
parent when dressed in man's clothes. The 
captain of a brig lying at anchor in the 
Congo River saw on shore an ape wearing 
trousers, and leading a horse. He bought 
the creature, and brought it to New York, 
where it was seized by custom-house officers 
for non-payment of protective duties, and 
was sold at auction in July, 1892. At the 
sale it was noticed that the ape chewed to- 
bacco and drank lager beer, holding the tum- 
bler in hand while drinking ; he was then 
wearing a jacket, trousers, and a straw hat. 
Looking on this scene, one may ask : Did 
man descend from this imitation of himself } 

He did, according to the Darwinian the- 



SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 143 

ory, which teaches that the human race and 
a race of anthropoid apes had the same ori- 
gin ; "however much the conclusion may 
revolt our pride," says Mr. Darwin.^ The 
process of descent was by " natural selec- 
tion," as it is called, or "the survival of the 
fittest," which means the fittest to survive in 
the struggle for existence. We are there- 
fore to believe that man, in the remote period 
of his origin, resembled, to some extent, the 
late Mr. Crowley of the Central Park Zoo, 
and the lager -beer -drinking ape who was 
seized by his brothers of the custom house. 

1 Darwin's theory of the origin of man cannot be stated 
better than in the following words from his Descent of 
Man (Pt. I. ch. 6): "An ancient form which possessed 
many characters common to the catarrhine and platyrrhine 
monkeys, and others in an intermediate condition, and 
some few perhaps distinct from those now present in either 
group, would undoubtedly have been ranked, if seen by a 
naturalist, as an ape or a monkey. And as man, under a 
genealogical point of view, belongs to the catarrhine or 
Old World stock, we must conclude, however much the 
conclusion may revolt our pride, that our early progenitors 
would have been properly thus designated. But we must 
not fall into the error of supposing that the early progenitor 
of the whole simian stock, including man, was identical 
with, or even closely resembled, any existing ape or mon- 
key." The evolutionists have never given any satisfactory 
explanation of the manner in which man acquired speech. 



144 SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 

The primary ancestors of the Congo ape and 
of its owner were affiliated ; in the process 
of evolution the original types melted away, 
and others appeared in their places ; and as 
these traveled " down the ringing grooves of 
change," a race of bipeds was developed fit- 
ted to survive and improve under the new 
conditions which animal life on the earth had 
to encounter. 

This was the parting of the ways. Mr. 
Crowley's type was left stationary ; and 
man's type, in a state of savagery, came to 
the front as a survivor of the fittest. At this 
point of survival there could have been but a 
small difierence between man and monkey. 
The former was nothing more than a " pri- 
meval semi-human savage," ^ the wild "brute 
ancestor of man," ^ whose " appearance w^as 
not so very different from that of his brother 
ape." ^ 

Neither of these creatures had yet acquired 
any articulate speech ; and we may suppose 
that each chattered like an original monkey, 
and "grunted and howled,"* as does the 

^ Fiske, Darwinism, p. 46. 

2 Fiske, The Destiny of Man, p. 28. 

8 Ibid. p. 29. * Fiske, Darwinism, p. 44. 



SOCIETY IN THE MENAGERIE 145 

monkey tribe now. They lived as brutes in 
herds ; their dwelling-places were caves and 
trees and similar shelters provided by Na- 
ture ; they quarreled with each other in the 
spirit of selfishness, as wild animals quarrel, 
and as wild animals they lived and died. 
All the time Nature was working out her 
process of evolution, leaving the ape behind, 
and carrying forward the " semi-human sav- 
age " through his upward grades of savagery, 
and his upward grades of barbarism, into the 
dawning lights of civilization. Thus man 
became " the heir of all the ages." 




THE MIND OF MY DOG 




THE MIND OF MY DOG 



" There is no doubt that all of our thinking, except the 
most simple and rudimentary, is carried on with the aid of 
words." 

" It is a mistake to suppose that we cannot think, cannot 
compare, or reason, or feel, or approve, or disapprove, 
without language." 

I WONDER what my dog would say about 
these contradictory opinions of two eminent 
men ; for it is certain that he understands 
language and has a thinking machinery, 
which he carries on both with the aid of 
words and without their aid. He has been 
my comrade for ten years ; a large white set- 
ter, with red cheeks penciled off from the 
white with exact regularity, red ears, a red 
spot on his back. The marks of his mind 
are as distinct as those of his body. The 
extent of his intelligence and the gentle 
beauty of his countenance are as notable as is 



150 THE MIND OF MY DOG 

his loyalty to me. I am prompted to say, 
when he is stretched at my feet watching me, 
as if to learn my thoughts : — 

" I look into your great brown eyes, 
Where love and loyal homage shine, 
And wonder where the difference lies 
Between your soul and mine ! " 

In the morning, Spot (that is the name of 
my dog) comes to my bedroom door and gets 
admission. I leave him there, and going to 
the bathroom, I say : " Do you want your 
face washed ? " He appears in a few mo- 
ments at the bathroom door and lifts up his 
face to be washed. When I say " that 's 
enough," he goes away. As I leave my 
house to go to the city, he accompanies me 
to the door, then goes to a window and 
watches me, and if he loses sight of me at 
one window, he hurries to another. He 
knows at what time I ought to return in the 
afternoon ; he never mistakes the train ; 
when it is due, he runs up and down stairs to 
find some one who will open the front door 
and let him out to meet me. If it is rain- 
ing he will meet me at the station with an 
umbrella in his mouth. When he sees my 
trunk brought downstairs he shows that he 



THE MIND OF MY DOG 151 

knows I am going away for a long absence ; 
and he knows I am going out for a walk only, 
when he sees me take up my hat and cane on 
a Sunday afternoon. When the servant says, 
" Dinner is served," he goes with the family 
to the dining-room. If I am not there he 
goes through the house in search of me, and 
when he finds me he tells me by his actions 
what he heard the servant say. In the even- 
ing he places himself near me, and some- 
times he gets up and stands gazing at me 
with intense earnestness, his head erect and 
his tail waving. I know that now he has 
something on his mind. I put down my 
book and say, " What do you want .-' " I ask, 
for example, " Do you want some water ? " 
If he still gazes at me, I know that I have 
not guessed his want. If I say to him, " Do 
you want to go outdoors .'' then get my hat ! " 
he runs into the hall, finds the hat and 
brings it to me with an evident feeling of 
pride that I have understood him. If I am 
told, " Spot has been a naughty boy to-day ; 
he went off on a tramp," and I look at him 
and say in a severe tone, " Where have you 
been } " he immediately hurries to me, puts 
his forefeet on my lap, licks my chin, and 



TS2 THE MIND OF MY DOG 

lays his head against me. I interpret these 
motions as his language saying in reply to 
my question, " Don't speak of it, but forgive 
me." He repeats this language until I say, 
" I forgive you ; " then he retires satisfied. 
When he comes into the house, he goes first 
to the room in which I am accustomed to be. 
If I am not there, he goes upstairs to my 
study. Not finding me there, he goes into 
my bedroom and looks through it ; then up 
to the attic and searches all the rooms ; then 
downstairs and visits each of the rooms 
again, in turn. If some one says to him, 
during his search, " Can't you find him } " 
he turns to that person with a wistful look, 
which says, " Do tell me where he is ! " He 
pursues the same course to find me that a 
man would pursue, by planning and execut- 
ing a search through all parts of the house. 

All these acts are the work of a mind. 
His mind works also in dreams. Lying 
asleep he is sometimes agitated by an im- 
aginary encounter with a foe, or by sensa- 
tions of being in peril ; 

" Like a dog he hunts m dreams." 

The mind in one dog is not like the mind 



THE MIND OF MY DOG 153 

in another. There are bright dogs and there 
are stupid dogs ; there are good dogs and 
there are rascal dogs ; there are dogs who 
feel keenly a word of reproach, and there 
are dogs who resent it. Men may be di- 
vided into the same classes. 

The truth is, that peculiarities of charac- 
ter and mental condition are as strongly 
marked in individual dogs as they are in in- 
dividual men and women. This results partly 
from their lineage and partly from the 
circumstances in which they have been edu- 
cated. As a dog reaches mental maturity 
when he has lived seven or eight years, or 
half of his natural lifetime, his period of edu- 
cation is brief ; hence it is said, " You can- 
not teach an old dog new tricks." And if he 
is always hustled out of the house and com- 
pelled to seek his society in the street or in 
the stable, he will become inferior in mental 
and moral development to one who is allowed 
to enjoy the sympathetic company and hu- 
manizing influences of a household. 

I have come to believe that a person who 
shows love for a dog, thereby shows the 
possession of some of the best elements of 
human nature. Such a love is returned in 



154 THE MIND OF MY DOG 

large abundance by the dog, to whom it be- 
comes a tie binding him to his master, in 
whose society he thenceforth finds the com- 
plete satisfaction of life. This love grows 
easily out of home companionship, from which 
gradually comes an intimate knowledge of 
the canine heart and an appreciation of its 
strength and loyalty. When reading the 
Journal of Sir Walter Scott, I came upon 
a record which revealed a noble phase of his 
character. It was written on the day of the 
beginning of the disasters which finally over- 
whelmed him. " My extremity is come," he 
wrote. "I suppose it will involve my all. 
This news will make sad hearts at Darnick, 
and in the cottages of Abbotsford. I am half 
resolved never to see the place again. My 
dogs will wait for me in vain. The thoughts 
of parting from these dumb creatures have 
moved me more than any of the painful re- 
flections I have put down. Poor things ! I 
must get them kind masters ; there may be 
those who, yet loving me, may love my dog 
because it has been mine. ... I find my 
dogs' feet on my knees. I hear them whin- 
ing and seeking me everywhere ; this is 
nonsense, but it is what they would do could 
they know how things are." 



THE MIND OF MY DOG 155 

The dog approaches man very closely in 
his feelings. There are but few human 
emotions that he does not show ; and yet 
there are persons who cannot understand 
one's love for a favorite dog ; such a dog, for 
example, as "Geist," whose name has been 
made immortal by Matthew Arnold's lyrical 
elegy at his grave. Geist lived only four 
years. Let me paraphrase the reflections 
of the master on the lost life of his " dear 
little friend : " — 

Four years ! Is it true, my dear little friend, 
that thy loving heart and patient soul were in- 
tended to reach so soon the end of their exist- 
ence, as if to teach to me the brevity of human 
life ? 

In thy liquid, melancholy eyes I saw the soul- 
fed springs of human emotions. I saw a sensi- 
bility to tears for sorrow, a sympathy for suffer- 
ing; such as ^neas felt when he exclaimed, 
"Tears are due to human misery, and human 
sufferings touch the heart ! " ^ I also saw in thee 

1 " That liquid, melancholy eye, 

From whose pathetic soul-fed springs 
Seem'd surging the Virgilian cry ; 
The sense of tears in mortal things." 

The " Virgilian cry," to which Matthew Arnold alludes, 
is the exclamation of vEneas, when, with his friend 



156 THE MIND OF MY DOG 

a gayety of spirit and an heroic temper. And is 
it possible that four years was their whole short 
day? 

As the past can never be repeated, so thou 
canst never be restored to me. Not all the ma- 
chinery of coming centuries, not all the resources 
of nature, with her vast powers of creation, can 
bring thee back. There may come another Geist, 
somewhat resembling thee ; but thy little self can 
never see life again ! 

Such is the stern law to which man must sub- 
mit. But finding it hard to bear, he imagines 
for himself an immortality, a second life ; I know 
not what it is to be, nor where. 

It was not so with Geist, who, without any 

Achates, he was looking at the decorations of the Temple 
of Juno at Carthage. Among these he saw a painting 
which represented the long series of battles preceding the 
Fall of Troy. The scene bringing to mind all the miseries 
and sorrows of that event, he shed tears, and exclaimed : — 

" Sunt lacrimse rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt ! " 
[Tears are due to human misery, and human sufierings touch the heart !] 

Connington's translation of this line is : — 
" E'en here the tear of pity springs, 
And hearts are touched by human things." 

The thought in Arnold's mind was, evidently, this : 
The sympathetic heart of Geist, as revealed in his eyes, 
expressed the same sympathy in human sorrows which 
yEneas felt when he saw the picture in the temple. This 
reference to the " Virgilian cry " was a tribute to the 
human emotions of the dog. 



THE MIND OF MY DOG 157 

thought of a second life, when the hour struck, 
laid himself humbly down to die ; giving a last 
glance of love to his despondent master. 

I will not let his memory perish. I will em- 
balm it in this verse, which shall rehearse to fu- 
ture generations his wonderful arts, his ways, his 
looks. Still I see him everywhere. I stroke his 
brown paws ; I call him to his vacant chair ; I 
hail him at the window ; I hear his scuffle on 
the stairs ; I see him lift his ears to ask which way 
I am going. Everything brings to mind some 
recollection of my little friend now gone forever. 

I was all the world to him ; and being fondly 
zealous for his fame, I am not content merely to 
embalm his memory in verse ; I will strive by 
other means to carry his fame to future years ; I 
will bury him close by, where the grass is smooth 
and warm, marking with a stone his last abode ; 
and when I, too, shall have passed away, those 
who see his grave will stop and say : " The peo- 
ple who lived here long ago intended, by this 
stone, to make known to future times their little 
friend Geist." 

Thus I, through the power of my verse, will 
revive to immortality that four-years' life which 
has been destroyed by nature. Geist shall be- 
come immortal ; he shall live forever in the 
realm of art ! 



158 THE MIND OF MY DOG 

The man who does not love his dog knows 
nothing of the truth expressed by Cole- 
ridge : — 

" He prayeth well who loveth well, 
Both man and bird and beast." 

I have always felt an interest in " a dog 
that the king loved " and lost. Samuel 
Pepys wrote in his diary, May 25, 1660: 
" I went, and Mr. Mansell and one of the 
King's footmen and a dog that the King 
loved, in a boat by ourselves, and so got on 
shore when the King did." This occurred 
at the landing of Charles the Second at 
Dover, when he was called from Holland to 
the throne of England. The "dog that the 
king loved " was not forgotten in the confu- 
sion of that memorable day. But soon after 
the landing the dog was lost ; and the follow- 
ing advertisement appeared in a London 
newspaper of June 28, 1660, which, it may 
be supposed, refers to the " dog that the king 
loved:" — 

" We must call upon you again for a black 
Dog, between a Grayhound and a Spaniel, no 
white about him, only a streak on his Brest, and 
his Tayl a little bobbed. It is his Majesties 
own Dog, and doubtless was stoln, for the Dog 



THE MIND OF MY DOG 159 

was not born nor bred in England, and would 
never forsake his Master. Whosoever findes him 
may acquaint any at VVhitehal, for the Dog was 
better known at Court than those who stole him. 

Will they never leave robbing his Majesty ? Must 
he not keep a dog ? " 

This dog w^as "known at Court" because 
he lived virith his master. The dog-owner, 
who imitates the king's example in this re- 
spect, will learn to love his dog. 

How many men are as magnanimous as 
my dog .'' How many have his sense of 
pride, of shame, of compassion, of wrong, and 
of right } He is a better example than is 
usually seen in man, of the truth that obedi- 
ence is the natural sequel of love. He pos- 
sesses what is called reason, because he has 
abstract ideas which he shows by inten- 
tionally adapting means to ends. This act 
carries with it a knowledge of the relation 
between the means that he employs and the 
ends that he has in view. You may see this 
in the action of a shepherd's dog when he is 
told to head off a flock of sheep in a narrow 
lane, and he is behind the flock. He will 
jump over the fence and run up on the out- 
side of it until he gets opposite the head of 



l6o THE MIND OF MY DOG 

the flock, when he will jump into the lane 
and turn the sheep back. A boy sent on the 
same errand will do it in the same way. A 
dog who is fond of going out with his mas- 
ter's carriage will hide himself when he hears 
an order for the carriage, lest he should be 
tied up and prevented from going with it. It 
is well known that chained dogs having a 
passion for killing sheep will slip off their 
collars to go on a raid, and on their return 
will slip into their collars and give themselves 
an innocent appearance. A dog who has 
been given meat at regular times, is ordered, 
as the meat is put before him, not to eat it ; 
he obeys this order, and waits. Such acts 
are the result of a process of reasoning. You 
cannot call them instinct in a dog, unless 
you call them instinct in a man ; for in each 
the mental process is similar. 

When a dog has passed beyond his period 
of infancy his acts are attended by conscious- 
ness, which is the opposite of instinct. In 
animals lower than the dog on the scale of 
creation, instinct is hereditary ; experience 
does not affect it. John Fiske describes it 
by saying : " The physical life of the lowest 
animals consists of a few simple acts directed 



THE MIND OF MY DOG i6l 

toward the securing of food and the avoid- 
ance of danger, and these acts we are in the 
habit of classing as instinctive." ^ Such ani- 
mals have nothing to learn ; their career is 
generally a repetition of the careers of their 
ancestors. I have a dog who, when he wants 
the door opened to admit him, strikes it with 
his paw. His mother asked for admission in 
the same way. Another stands before the 
door and whines for admission. So did his 
mother. While the dog has the power of do- 
ing some acts which its ancestors did, it also 
has latent capacities which are brought out 
by experience. Up to a certain point ex- 
perience develops the canine mind as it 
develops the human mind. The difference 
between the growths of the two minds lies 
in the natural limitations of the one, and in 
the unlimited expansions of which the other 
is capable. 

As I study my dog's consciousness it is 
hard to believe that there is no eternal life 
for him, while I am asked by philanthropists 
to believe that there is one for such inferior 
animals as the pigmy in Equatorial Africa, 
and the intoxicated vagabond whom my dog 

1 The Destiny of Man, p. 39. 



l62 THE MIND OF MY DOG 

will not permit to approach my door. Some 
quadrupeds as well as men were saved in the 
ark. Will any dogs be saved in the day 
when " Final ruin fiercely drives her plough- 
share o'er creation } " 

" Can the love that filled those eyes, 
With most eloquent replies, 
When the glossy head close pressing, 
Grateful met your hand's caressing. 
Can the mute intelligence. 
Baffling oft our human sense 
With strange wisdom, buried be 
Under the wild cherry-tree ? " 

Sad as it may appear, there can be but one 
answer to such inquiries. Neither man nor 
dog is born for immortality by reason of be- 
ing born with a mind. The Scriptures teach 
that immortality is a state for which man 
alone is a candidate ; to him it is offered on 
one condition, which is embraced in the 
words of Him who spake as never man 
spake : " He that heareth me and believeth 
on Him that sent me hath eternal life." 
This life has not been offered to dogs. The 
mental attributes of my dog, which have 
attracted attention, must be considered as 
indicating merely his fitness for the purposes 
of his existence as my companion. When 
his life ends his mind must perish with it. 



II 



DAYS ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 




DAYS ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC. 



Life on a ship is out of all harmony with 
life ashore. The dawn of the first morning 
at sea is the beginning of a new sort of exist- 
ence. You find yourself in a strange house, 
filled by strange people, strange noises, and 
strange odors. There are no familiar asso- 
ciations ; the range of your movements be- 
comes narrow and limited ; the range of your 
eyes is bounded by a monotonous horizon ; 
you see in the great strength and bulk of the 
ship indications of perils that may be encoun- 
tered ; even the flowers, with which unwise 
friends persisted in adorning your cabin, sug- 
gest unpleasant thoughts as they " suffer a 
sea change " and are thrown overboard. 

Saturday. — The pilot was discharged 
early in the afternoon. The steamship was 
reeling off the line of her voyage with rapid 
speed, when ** the long black land " sunk out 



1 66 DAVS ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 

of sight in the west, and the sun went down. 
At the same time a sinking of the heart was 
felt by homesick passengers. 

Sunday. — Morning is ushered in with 
various noises made by scrubbing-brushes, 
holy-stones, squilgees, and cataracts of water 
traversing the decks. The boatswain's whis- 
tle summons the watch to make sail. Eight- 
een rugged men take the foretopsail hal- 
yards in their hands and strike into a song ; 
the leader of the watch repeating the solo in 
a stentorian voice, while all hands are lively 
on the chorus. Here it is : — 

Solo. Chorus. . 



A strong sou- west-er's blow- ing, boys! To 

Solo. 



^mM^m^ 



EfES 






way hay storm a -long, John. Hark ! don't ye 
Chorus. 






hear it . . , roar -ing, boys! Ah, ha! come a- 



long, get a - long, storm a - long, John. 

And as the song runs its rounds, the heavy 



DAYS ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 167 

foretopsail yard slides slowly up to the mast- 
head. " Now haul in the lee braces," says 
the whistle ; and the men, tailing on the 
ropes, tramp the deck to another endless song 
and chorus : — 

Solo, 



pij^^ii^^^i^jp 



We '11 haul the bow -line so ear-ly in the morn-ing. 
Chorus. 



^^^m^^mm 



We' II haul the bow- line, the bow - line haul! 

" Belay all," shouted by the boatswain, puts 
an end to the work, and to the sleep of the 
passengers. As the day wears on, a few sea- 
sick people, swathed in shawls, are brought 
up from their rooms, and are carefully packed 
into reclining chairs standing along the deck. 
These people have already become faint- 
hearted and disgusted with their venture on 
the sea. Some of them say that they would 
give a large price if they could now be put 
on board a steamer to return directly home ; 
and they say that if they get safely back 
from this voyage (of which result they appear 
to have doubts), they will never go to sea 
again ; never, so long as they live ! 



1 68 DAYS ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 

There are passengers who sympathize 
with the sufferers, and are ready to tell them 
what is "good for seasickness," They pre- 
scribe for the poor creatures an anodyne 
plaster, or sulphuric ether ; some say that 
lemon juice is good, and some say cham- 
pagne. Pills and plasters are recommended, 
also Christian science and cracked ice. But 
nobody praises the virtues of the shore. 
And yet, the only preventive of seasickness, 
for those who will be seasick, is the immova- 
ble shore. 

Other passengers, who have stout stom- 
achs, are now trying to get on their " sea 
legs ; " they are trying to walk fore and aft 
the rolling ship, making one leg shorter than 
the other at will, as they walk. Those who 
cannot acquire this skill, or who refuse to be 
supple-kneed to the ocean, go skiting into the 
lee scuppers, where they lose their dignity 
and their temper ; and these also wish they 
had stayed ashore. 

So the first day of the voyage brings a 
severe trial to inexperienced voyagers. Their 
nerves are shattered, their bones ache, their 
sensations are disagreeable, their courage is 
exhausted, they become weary and faint. 



DAYS ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 169 

while the ship offers them no consolation but 
a broth with onions in it. And yet delicate 
women, for the hopes which London and 
Paris hold forth, do not hesitate to submit 
themselves to this sea of uncleanly sufferings. 

But he who is fond of voyaging, and who 
is never disturbed by the sea, will not wish 
for a more enjoyable day than this. The 
ship is doing her best work ; steadied by her 
topsails and staysails, she is running and 
rolling to the east with an alacrity that suits 
an old sea-traveler's ideas. With what grace 
of motion she lifts her head and then dips it 
to the waters ! How prettily she swings 
from larboard to starboard, while steadily 
pushing her way over long ranges of waves, 
swelling in vast heaps, which appear as if 
they were about to slide down and overwhelm 
her, 

Monday. — A fog. The sails have been 
furled, and every preparation made to insure 
immediate action of the helm, should any ob- 
ject loom up suddenly in our way. A misty 
rain is driving down the wind, and the hori- 
zon ahead is bounded by the bowsprit. Two 
lookouts clothed in oil-skins are on the fore- 
castle, two are in the foretop, and two are 



lyo DAYS ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 

on the bridge with the captain and officer of 
the watch. Their eyes and ears are alert to 
detect the mysteries concealed by the fog. 
Their watchings indicate perils to the ship ; 
but she steams ahead as if she knew her 
course to be clear of every obstruction. 

There is no comfort for passengers to be 
found on deck ; the wet wind is harsh ; every- 
thing fore and aft drips water. There is no 
comfort to be found in the cabin, where the 
atmosphere is bad, and a silence ominous of 
danger prevails. Many passengers remain 
in their berths. They hear the swash of the 
ocean against the ship's sides ; they see the 
tips of the waves dash up and darken, for a 
moment, the little port-lights ; they listen to 
the sough of the wind, and to the warning 
cry of the steam-whistle ; they are speech- 
less because of anxiety ; they are thinking of 
the quiet homes they have left behind. That 
young bride, who is cushioned up in a corner 
of the gilded but gloomy saloon, probably 
wishes that she had never been married ; 
for, in all her dreams of the future, there 
could not have been pictured such a discon- 
solate, such a dismal day as is this day at sea. 

A few of the passengers answer the soft- 



DAYS ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 171 

footed steward's call to lunch. As some of 
them reel up to the tables, their weary-look- 
ing faces suggest to one another the unneces- 
sary question, " How do you feel to-day ? " 
and perhaps they find some comfort in the 
fact that misery is a mutual friend. Mean- 
while the captain's favorite cat walks along 
the sill under the saloon port-lights ; she 
pauses to receive attentions from the few 
passengers who are at the table, looks at her- 
self in the mirrors, and tries to catch the flies 
that have come with us from land. A girl 
says, " How it seems like home to see a cat 
here ! " At the same moment a scream an- 
nounces that a woman has seen rats in her 
stateroom ; and an old seafarer says it is a 
good omen if you find rats aboard during a 
fog. 

All day the fog has covered the ocean, and 
our steamer has been going through it at full 
speed. Suddenly a sailing ship looms up 
right ahead, and crossing our course. The 
bow of our steamer strikes her starboard 
quarter, cutting right through her hull, and 
immediately each vessel disappears from the 
other in the fog. The steamer is stopped 
and all hands are piped to the boats, while 



X 



172 DAYS ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 

carpenters sound the wells and report that 
there is no water in them. The covers of 
the boats are cut away in haste, fall tackles 
are manned, davits are swung out, and each 
boat's crew takes its place in quiet order. 
As soon as the boats float they are rowed 
away to find the ship. When they have re- 
turned with the wrecked crew, our steamer 
plunges ahead again into the fog as if nothing 
had happened. 

Tuesday. — The wind and the sea have 
risen together, and early in the morning it 
becomes necessary to close every port-light 
and to shut the gangway doors. It is a cold 
wind ; the look of the sky is harsh. There 
are to be seen those peculiar forms of clouds 
which, as an old saw says, " make high ships 
carry low sails." At noon the wind is blow- 
ing fresh from the northwest. There is a fly- 
ing scud on the sea, and there is more of a 
breeze than nervous passengers desire. The 
topsails and fore -course are drawing full. 
The ship feels their impulse, 

" And swiftest of a thousand keels 
She leaps to the careering seas ! " 

Suddenly the wind hauls abeam, and the top 
of a wave jumps aboard amidships. It 



DAYS ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 173 

knocks open the gangway doors, bounces 
into the cabin, swashes into the *staterooms, 
and terrifies all the women and children. 
Now the lee sheet of the maintopsail parts, 
and the wind, lifting the great sail, thrashes 
it into ribbons. The watch hurry aloft, send 
down the topsail rags, and bend on a new 
sail, which is immediately hoisted. Then the 
men are sent up to furl everything, for the 
wind has suddenly hauled to the east of 
north, and only fore-and-aft sails can draw. 
All this is what seamen call fine weather. 

Wednesday. — I went on deck at the 
break of day ; the winds were still ; the 
ocean appeared to be in truth a " gray and 
melancholy waste." Far off was a ship com- 
ing out of the east ; her sails and spars were 
clearly outlined on the dawn. As we ap- 
proached her she sheered up towards us and 
asked for our latitude and longitude. Then 
she resumed her course, and in a short time 
she was hull down in the west. As day ad- 
vances, the ocean sparkles with life and 
brightness ; a pleasant breeze runs over it ; 
here and there white-caps are visible on the 
dancing waters. Those passengers who have 
been seasick are beginning to enjoy the voy- 



174 I^^VS ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 

age, and the most timid of them is admiring 
the scenery to-day. To the dullest eye the 
ship appears to be a thing of beauty. Indeed 
she is profane ; for she says, " The sea is 
mine!" — as with a gently rolling gait she 
passes triumphantly over it, and goes un- 
checked on her course to England. In the 
afternoon we passed a large vessel, bottom 
up ; and not long after, we passed an aban- 
doned water-logged vessel with the stumps of 
three masts standing. 

All day, under control of a boatswain, the 
watch on deck are scrubbing and polishing 
and painting, until no house is as clean as 
the ship. They scrape spars, patch canvas, 
rub brasses, put up chafing-gear, uncover 
and re-cover the boats. With all this ap- 
pearance of business, there is in reality no 
important work for the watch to do. Very 
different is it with seamen aboard a sailing- 
ship. There, steady and hard work makes 
the voyage. To command a ship under sail 
is a pleasure which calls into use every men- 
tal faculty. But the steamship is merely a 
machine, whose moving power is independent 
of the supervising command. The engine 
pushes the hull through the sea, acting with 



DAYS OAT THE NORTH ATLANTIC 175 

the precision of a chronometer. Sails are set 
on occasion. The captain is the gentleman 
of the voyage. He has a five-o'clock tea in 
his cabin. His steamship is navigated prin- 
cipally from the owner's office, whence in- 
structions are issued to him as to the course 
he is to steer, the action he is to take in cer- 
tain emergencies, and the day on which he is 
to arrive at his destination. The officer of 
the deck looks at the compass now and then, 
to assure himself that the quartermaster is 
steering according to orders ; he lifts his 
glasses to scan the horizon ; and, except 
when in a fog or a storm, there is little else 
for him to do but to work out the latitude 
and longitude. 

Thursday. — The ocean is in angry mood 
this morning. We are pursued by a gale 
from the northwest. As day advances, both 
wind and sea are traveling faster than the 
steamer. At noon a tremendous wave bursts 
under the stern ; its fragments fall like an 
avalanche on the after deck, causing the 
steamer to tremble fore and aft. As she 
lifts herself up from this attack, it is seen 
that bulwarks are broken, a boat has been 
swept away, great iron ventilators have been 



176 DAYS ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 

wrenched off, and cataracts of water have 
been poured into the saloon, setting afloat 
everything therein that was movable. The 
passengers dare not venture out of their 
berths. Women are dazed with terror ; as 
the gale increases in violence, some of them 
believe that they will never see the land 
again. 

Friday. — This morning the barometer has 
fallen to 28° 36' ; the wind is blowing from 
every quarter of the compass in succession, 
and it is veering about continually. We are 
very near the centre of a cyclonic hurricane. 
All passengers are excluded from the decks ; 
they are battened down below as if they 
were cargo. The captain consults with his 
first officer and with his engineer ; then he 
determines to abandon his eastward course 
and head the steamer off for the south, in 
order to get out of the whirl of the cyclone. 
The struggle between the ship and the ocean 
now presents a magnificent spectacle. Her 
deck is at times buried beneath green seas 
which tumble aboard in immense masses, 
and roar in angry cascades from one side to 
the other. She shivers through and through, 
as her continuous efforts are made against 



DAYS ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 177 

the tempest. Anxiety is felt by the watch- 
ful officers on the bridge and in the engine- 
room ; something more than anxiety is felt 
in the cabin, where, during the turmoil, a 
child is born. By night-fall the steamer has 
got clear of the tempest, and is standing up 
to her course, in a cold, tumultuous sea. 

Saturday. — This is a sunny day; but 
there is a wild and a very confused ocean. 
Land of Goshen ! how the good ship rolls ! 
There is a savageness in her actions which 
gives me a new idea of her character. Down 
teeters the port rail into the seething foam, 
and when it rises down goes the starboard 
rail, dipping up green seas on either side 
alternately, while her quarters are shivering 
like a chilled hound. Sheets of spray fly up 
her sides and fall with the noise of pebbles 
on the deck. Passengers creep with sudden 
advances and sudden backslidings into the 
cabin, and brace themselves into secure seats. 
They are consoling themselves with the 
thought that the land is near, and that we 
shall soon be in more quiet waters. 

Sunday. — The highlands of Kerry are in 
sight. There is the famous Dunquin, whose 
people boast that it is the next parish to the 



178 DAYS ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 

United States. Halfway down its immense 
precipice of Sibyl Head, which descends 
fathoms deep into the Atlantic Ocean, may 
be seen a rocky projection, resembling a co- 
lossal Irishman with arm outstretched to the 
west, which is " Saint Patrick sending his 
blessing to Amerikay." Now we are shaping 
our course for Cape Clear. At noon we sight 
Browhead and the tall light-tower on Fast- 
net Rock. A heavy swell comes up from the 
southwest, and the steamer is taking on many 
disagreeable motions ; but seasickness has 
disappeared. During the afternoon we run 
into smooth water under the lee of the Irish 
coast. Now everybody looks with wistful 
eyes at the green bluffs, and seems to have 
forgotten all the discomforts and perils of 
the voyage. When the steamer stops, about 
seventeen miles east of the Old Head . of 
Kinsale, there are not many of her passen- 
gers who dare to say that they will never 
make another voyage across the North At- 
lantic Ocean. 



THE FLIGHT OF THE ALBATROSS 




THE FLIGHT OF THE ALBATROSS 



The wandering albatross lives in the air, 
and sleeps and bathes in the austral seas 
which stretch away below the thirtieth par- 
allel of south latitude. It has been called 
the fateful bird of nautical romance. The 
Ancient Mariner, who with his cross-bow 
shot the albatross that followed his ship, 
confessed he " had done a hellish thing," 
which was to bring misfortune to him and 
his crew : — 

" For all averred I had killed the bird 
That made the breeze to blow, 
Ah ! wretch ! said they, the bird to slay. 
That made the breeze to blow." 

It is the greatest of ocean birds, measuring 
about four feet from its beak to the end of 
its short tail, and having a spread of wings 
extending ten or eleven feet. Its beak is 
crooked and massive, and its webbed feet are 



1 82 THE FLIGHT OF THE ALBATROSS 

armed with stout nails. Its body resembles 
somewhat that of a goose ; for which reason 
English sailors call it the Cape goose. Gen- 
erally the color of the albatross is brown on 
its back, with a white breast and underfeath- 
ers ; the brown changes to white, as age in- 
creases, and then no whiteness can excel the 
purity of its plumage. Whiter than a lily, 
whiter than snow, it has a pearly brilliancy 
which may be supposed to have come from 
the pure air and water in which it dwells. 
On account of its whiteness, French sailors 
call it le mouton dii Cap, the Cape sheep. 
Only during the brief time of breeding do 
albatrosses go to land ; at other times the 
Southern Ocean and the heavens above it 
are their home. 

The movements of the albatross afford an 
interesting study to a voyager ; and the 
question as to the mechanical principles by 
which these majestic birds move through the 
air serves to beguile the tedium of many a 
weary day at sea. In a calm their move- 
ments are clumsy ; they appear to stumble, 
and to be unable to fly like other birds. But 
when a breeze comes, they set their enor- 
mous wings in a position to take it, and they 



THE FLIGHT OF THE ALBATROSS 183 

are then impelled through the air as quietly 
as a ship is impelled by a trade wind. They 
rarely ply their wings except when rising 
from the waves. Once up, away they go, 
— the wings, like studding-sails, outspread, 
with the wind, or against it ; veering in this 
direction and in that by a turning of their 
beaks ; hovering and circling around the 
ship, and gliding over the ocean with a great 
variety of motions, as a skater glides over 
the ice ; or, at other times, driving a direct 
course into the eye of a gale. They may 
breakfast at the Cape of Good Hope, and 
dine at Cape Horn, Only now and then, in 
a journey of hours on hours, and miles on 
miles, do they vibrate their wings ; and to 
an observer on the deck of a ship, all their 
motions appear to be the poetry of sailing. 

But whether the albatross sails like a ship, 
or flies like a bird, is a question disputed by 
naturalists. It is admitted that the albatross 
appears to keep the tenor of its way through 
the air, " with giant vans outstretched and 
motionless." Mr. Darwin was unable to 
detect even a tremor of the quills. In his 
journal of a voyage around the world in the 
Beagle, when near Cape Horn, he says : 



i84 THE FLIGHT OF THE ALBATROSS 

"The Storm raged with its full fury; our 
horizon was narrowly limited by the sheets 
of spray borne by the wind. The sea looked 
ominous, like a dreary waving plain with 
patches of drifting snow ; whilst the ship 
labored heavily, the albatross glided with its 
expanded wings right up the wind." De La- 
fresnaye, in the " Dictionnaire Universel 
d'Histoire Naturelle," says: "At times one 
sees the albatrosses flying in the storm, 
against the most violent wind, without any 
effort, and without any appearance of their 
flight ^eing slackened. In all these circum- 
stances, it would seem as if they only hover, 
and one does not perceive the least flapping 
of their wings." ^ And Mr. Moseley, of the 
Challenger exploring ship, says, in his " Notes 
of a Naturalist," that the flight of the alba- 
tross " may be compared to that of a skillful 
skater on the outside edge. It ekes out to 
the utmost the momentum derived from a 
few powerful strokes, and uses it up slowly, 

1 " On les voit tantot voler, dans les tempetes, centre le 
vent le plus violent, sans effort et sans que leur vol en 
paraisse ralenti. Dans toutes ces circonstances, ils sem- 
blent ne faire que planer, et Ton ne s'aper^oit pas qu'ils 
impriment le moindre battement a leurs ailes." 



THE FLIGHT OF THE ALBATROSS 185 

making all possible use at the same time of 
the force of the wind." 

The flight of the albatross has always ex- 
cited wonder and admiration. The theory 
that it sails like a ship rather than flies like 
a bird is supported by the constant altera- 
tion of the angle of its wings with the surface 
of the sea, as it glides along ; this change is 
made to catch the advantage of every current 
of air, and when the bird feels the breeze it 
instinctively assumes that angle which will 
give to it the most propulsion. By these 
means it keeps company with a ship, while, 
at the same time, it ranges far and wide over 
the ocean. On the contrary theory, the 
Duke of Argyll says that the albatross is 
merely an example of extreme perfection and 
special adaptation ; that it is the potential 
energy of the bird's weight which enables it 
to fly, when once it has been lifted ; and the 
fact of its flying into the eye of the wind 
does not prove that it sails like a ship, be- 
cause a ship cannot sail directly into the 
wind ; therefore the sailing of the bird must 
be absolutely different from that of a ship ; 
and to assign to it a special power of sailing 
"is a pure delusion." 



1 86 THE FLIGHT OF THE ALBATROSS 

Let US allow the naturalists to settle that 
question. 

As darkness comes over the sea, our ship 
leaves behind the albatrosses that have ac- 
companied her during the day. They are 
now feeding upon broken food which the cook 
has thrown overboard. After this supper, 
they will compose themselves to sleep on the 
billows. The ship sails a hundred miles or 
more, and at the next sunrising the same 
albatrosses are discovered around her; known 
to be the same by some peculiarities of their 
plumage. How swift and brief and tireless 
must have been their pursuit of the ship, 
after they awoke from sleep ! 

Mr. Dana, in his " Two Years before the 
Mast," says : " At eight o'clock we altered 
our course to the northward, bound for Juan 
Fernandez. This day we saw the last of the 
albatrosses, which had been our companions 
a great part of the time off the Cape. I had 
been interested in the bird from descriptions, 
and Coleridge's poem, and was not at all dis- 
appointed. We caught one or two with a 
baited hook which we floated astern upon a 
shingle. Their long, flapping wings, long legs 



THE FLIGHT OF THE ALBATROSS 187 

and large staring eyes give them a peculiar 
appearance. They look well on the wing ; 
but one of the finest sights that I have ever 
seen was an albatross asleep upon the water, 
during a calm, off Cape Horn, when a heavy 
sea was running. There being no breeze, 
the surface of the water was unbroken, but a 
long, heavy swell was rolling, and we saw 
the fellow, all white, directly ahead of us, 
asleep upon the waves with his head under 
his wing, now rising on the top of one of the 
big billows and then falling slowly until he 
was lost in the hollow between. He was 
undisturbed for some time, until the noise 
of our bows, gradually approaching, roused 
him, when, lifting his head, he stared upon 
us for a moment and then spread his wide 
wings and took his flight." 

It has been said that the albatross is an 
inoffensive creature, that it never attacks a 
man. In the " Rime of the Ancient Mari- 
ner " it is called a harmless bird : — 

" ' Is it he ? ' quoth one ; ' Is this the man ? ' — 
By him who died on cross, 
With his cruel bow, he laid full low 
The harmless albatross ! " 

This description of the nature of the bird is 



1 88 THE FLIGHT OF THE ALBATROSS 

incorrect, as the following incident shows. 
The ship Oracle, sixty days out from New 
York, bound to the Pacific Ocean, was in the 
latitude of the Falkland Islands ; when, early 
in the morning, all hands were called to 
shorten sail. Two boys were sent to the 
mainroyal yard with orders to furl the royal, 
then lay below to the topgallant yard, and 
stow away the sail. Having furled the royal 
they came down, took their places on the lee 
and weather yard-arms, and began their work. 
The sea was heavy, the ship was going fast 
with the wind to the south, and the yard had 
been braced up to help the boys in handling 
the sail ; when, by the carelessness of the 
man at the wheel, the ship luffed and shiv- 
ered, the sail flew up, and a boy was knocked 
from the lee yard-arm into the ocean. The 
other boy cried the alarm, " A man over- 
board ! " and from his lofty perch he saw his 
chum swimming in the wake of the ship, 
which was running, like the ship of the An- 
cient Mariner, 

" With sloping masts and dipping prow." 

As quick as possible, she was put about 
and headed for the swimmer, who was 



THE FLIGHT OF THE ALBATROSS 189 

courageously holding his own, while his ship- 
mates stood at the bow and amidships, with 
lines and buoys ready to cast. Suddenly, an 
albatross, which had been hovering about the 
ship, sailed down and struck the boy's head 
with its talons. He sank from sight and was 
seen no more. 




THE LAST MAN ON A WRECK 




THE LAST MAN ON A WRECK 



Our ship was steaming in pursuit of her 
great circle course across the Pacific Ocean. 
The weather was wild and chilly ; the sea 
was barren and uninteresting to the eye ; 
and we sailed day after day without meeting 
any ship, or finding any variety in the voy- 
age, save a fog bank, or a spell of sunshine, 
or a piece of drift-wood, or a fleet of tiny 
white nautiluses. At evening twilight the 
ocean seemed to me unusually desolate. 
The melancholy noise of its waters, the in- 
distinctness of objects about the ship, and 
some unknown and oppressive influence, 
which checked conversation, compelled me 
to turn in and seek relief from the lonesome- 
ness in sleep. 

The next morning I heard the cry, " Sail 
ho ! " called from the forecastle. On the 
horizon, in the sunlight, there was an object 



194 THE LAST MAN ON A WRECK 

which looked like a wreck. When our ship 
drew near, it proved to be the remains of a 
brig. Her foremast was standing, her fore- 
topsail and jib were partly set, the foresail 
was hanging in the clewlines, the mainmast 
had been cut away, and the bulwarks were 
gone. Slimy green grass was growing on 
her sides. Her deck, all awash, was bent 
up in an arch by the swelling of wet lumber 
in the hold. Over the forecastle was spread 
a loose sail, which flapped up and down, and 
was wetted by the sea. On the foretop was 
a shelter made by a strip of canvas passing 
around it and lashed to the rigging. Evi- 
dently these places had been occupied by 
shipwrecked people ; but there was no living 
thing to be seen, nor did there appear to be 
a spot on the wreck where any life could 
exist. 

Immediately we sent off a boat to examine 
the wreck. On reaching it, two of the boat's 
crew ran aloft into the foretop. There was 
nothing in it. The officer in charge of the 
boat, who was standing up as it lay alongside 
the wreck, shouted to his men in the top to 
search in the canvas for a paper, a log-book, 
or something that would tell the story of the 



THE LAST MAN ON A WRECK 19$ 

wreck. He had hardly finished these orders 
when the emaciated figure of a half-clad, 
wretched-looking man rose up from under 
the sail on the forecastle right in front of 
him. The man's eyes were glassy and life- 
less ; he held one hand over his heart as if 
to suppress excitement, and, lifting up the 
other, he muttered a voiceless prayer, and 
fell back into the heap of wet canvas. The 
two seamen hurried down from aloft, and, 
lifting up the man, said : — 

" Where are the rest of you .'' " 

"All gone ! All gone ! " he replied. 

He could only mutter the words in faint 
tones. Then he said, " Water ! water ! " and 
became insensible. 

They tore away the sail from the fore- 
castle, which was the only part of the vessel 
that was above the sea-level, and searched 
for his shipmates. Nobody there ! it was 
true ; they were " all gone ! " 

There was too much swell on the sea to 
allow the men to lift the insensible survivor 
gently into the boat ; so they took him up, 
and, standing on the half-submerged bow of 
the wreck, they waited an opportunity, as it 
rose and fell, to drop him into the arms of 



196 THE LAST MAN ON A WRECK 

two men who stood in the boat to catch him. 
And so they received this living skeleton, 
and brought him aboard the steamer. 

He was put to bed, and nourished with 
brandy and water. His legs were numb ; he 
had lost the senses of taste and smell ; his 
sense of sight was feeble ; he weighed not 
more than one hundred pounds. 

Two days later he showed signs of recov- 
ery. He could speak. The next day he be- 
gan to tell his story of the wreck, the sub- 
stance of which I embody in this narrative. 
He was master of the brig, which four 
months gone had sailed from San Francisco 
for Callao, having a company of ten seamen 
and two passengers. Two weeks after leav- 
ing port, the brig encountered a hurricane 
and became waterlogged. Then she drifted 
for one hundred and ten days at the mercy 
of the winds, and no help reached her in all 
that time. During the hurricane all the 
provisions were flooded ; the sea got into the 
fresh-water casks, and, with the exception of 
a box of starch, some salted tongues, and 
salmon washed up from below, the men on 
the wreck had nothing to eat, nor had they 
anything to drink. Four of them died from 



THE LAST MAN ON A WRECK 197 

exposure. The eight who remained retreated 
to the foretop, around which they arranged 
the canvas shelter. The foretop was a semi- 
circular platform at the head of the fore- 
mast, about twenty-five feet above the deck, 
and about the size of half the circular top of 
a small table. They went down daily to 
catch fish for sustenance ; their hooks were 
made of wire taken from the edge of a tin 
pan ; their lines were strands of rigging ; 
their bait was rags. With these equipments 
they caught skipjacks and albacores, and 
enough of them to lay away some to be 
dried. They chewed the raw fish, for they 
had no fire to cook them. By and by their 
throats became so parched and sore that 
they could not swallow what they chewed. 
Every night they climbed up into the fore- 
top to sleep. As they could not lie down in 
this small area, they slept leaning against 
the mast and against each other as best they 
could. When it rained, they caught water 
in a pan to drink. As there was but little of 
it for so many, they took the sheep-skins 
that had been used on the rigging for chaf- 
ing-gear, and, allotting a piece to each man, 
they spread the pieces on the edge of the 



198 THE LAST MAN ON A WRECK 

foretop to absorb dews that fell in the night. 
In the morning each man sucked dry his 
piece of wool to alleviate his thirst, and so 
they existed for sixty-five days. Then, hav- 
ing gone down from the foretop as usual to 
catch fish on the sixty-sixth day, they found 
themselves to be too weak to climb the rig- 
ging any more. That night they spread a 
sail on the forecastle, and lay down under it 
in the wet, hoping for the day to come speed- 
ily when they should be rescued. 

There were two Italians in the crew, who 
now demanded that lots should be drawn for 
the death of one of the eight to furnish food 
for the others. The captain would not con- 
sent to this. He said that each man must 
take his chance for life, and all be saved or 
all be lost together. The others agreed with 
him indifferently. But the Italians were so 
intent on their plan that the captain, with 
the two passengers, agreed to watch them, 
and if they attempted murder to kill them 
at once. The captain had a loaded pistol 
in his pocket. Now hunger, thirst, and 
weakness increased every day. Still the 
captain encouraged his miserable fellows 
with the hope of a rescue. He said he had 



THE LAST MAN ON A WRECK 199 

dreamed about it. This hope was so much 
in his day-thoughts that he often fancied he 
heard the welcome cry, " Brig ahoy ! " and, 
hearing it, as he supposed, he got up and 
peered out of the sail that covered them. 
But he never saw anything save the expanse 
of ocean and the expanse of sky. His com- 
rades also scanned the horizon daily in search 
of a ship coming to their rescue. At differ- 
ent times they thought they saw three ships 
sailing on courses far away from them. 

They had existed in this condition about 
ninety-five days, when, one morning, a bark 
under full sail came near the wreck, and was 
hove to abreast of it. There she was, in 
plain sight and motionless ; her topsails were 
aback, her forestaysails a-weather, her helm 
a-lee. The poor men got up eagerly, and 
waved what they had that would attract 
attention. The Italians waded through the 
water on deck, got upon the stump of the 
mainmast, and waved their hats. All hands 
tried to shout together ; their voices were 
feeble and husky ; they could not make much 
of an outcry. 

The stranger bark was so near that the 
shipwrecked men could have thrown a stone 



^00 THE LAST MAN ON A WRECIC 

aboard of her had they had their usual 
strength. They saw that her hull was painted 
black, with a gilt band running around it. 
They saw the letters of her name on the 
stern and trail-boards, but their eyes were 
too dizzy to read them. They saw that she 
had a new spanker set ; they noticed it was 
new because it had not been stained by the 
weather. They saw three men go aft, and 
speak with a man standing on the quarter- 
deck, who wore a cap, and appeared to be 
the master ; then they saw this man look at 
the wreck, and turn and talk with a woman 
who sat near him in a willow armchair, and 
who was wearing a black and red plaid shawl. 
The shipwrecked men saw all these things, 
as they thought, and waited to be taken off. 
But, to their great astonishment, the bark 
filled her topsails and sailed away. 

Was this a phantasm } Its effect on the 
shipwrecked men was that of a reality. 

On the afternoon of that day the two Ital- 
ians became delirious and jumped overboard, 
and despair began to extinguish what life 
there was in the other sufferers. The next 
day three of them died, and the captain rolled 
their bodies into the ocean. Then the young- 



THE LAST MAN ON A WRECK 201 

est of the passengers died. He was not 
much more than a boy ; but he had been 
resohite, and had tried hard to live. He said 
he had left a good mother at home, that he 
loved her, and wanted to see her once more. 
The events on the wreck were written 
with a pencil, as they occurred, on the mar- 
gins of a nautical almanac, by the captain or 
by the elder passenger. These two, being 
now the only survivors of the twelve who 
had sailed in the brig, laid themselves down 
under the sail on the forecastle to wait for 
death or for salvation. On the one hundred 
and seventh day, according to the notes on 
the margin of the almanac, it blew a gale. 
Green seas broke over the forecastle, drench- 
ing the two men under the canvas. It is a 
wonder that they were not washed off. At 
night it rained. The passenger crept out of 
the sail, caught a cupful of water, and drank 
the whole of it. In the morning he was 
missing. The captain then resolved that if 
help did not come with the next day, he 
would drink a mixture of bluestone and ink, 
which he had prepared, and so end his tor- 
menting misery by poison. On that day our 
ship found and saved this last survivor of 
the wreck. 



202 THE LAST MAN ON A WRECK 

When he was landed, and as soon as his 
story became known, inquiries were made in 
every direction to learn the name of that 
bark which came alongside the wreck and 
then sailed away and abandoned it. No ves- 
sel answering to the description given was 
known to be afloat on the North Pacific 
Ocean at that time. It was therefore con- 
cluded that she was a creature of the diseased 
imaginations of the shipwrecked men. 

The remarkable fact that the same vision 
appeared at the same time to all these men 
may be easily explained. One of them fan- 
cied that he, at last, saw the rescuing ship 
which all had been looking for ; he told the 
news to his companions ; he pointed to the 
coming vessel, and described her as she ap- 
proached the wreck. Their minds had sunk 
to that semi-conscious state in which fancy 
and reality are quickly confused, and there- 
fore they believed his words and imagined 
that they also saw what he described. Their 
strong desire for salvation had brought be- 
fore their weary eyes the apparition of that 
for which they were earnestly longing. 



SEVEN DAYS IN A JINRIKISHA 




SEVEN DAYS IN A JINRIKISHA 



The commander of the Japanese steamer 
in which I took passage was an American, 
who, the day before, had married a sea-going 
widow of Shanghai. This was to be the 
honeymoon voyage, for which the day opened 
with a cold rain and a northeast gale. I was 
carried from my hotel, in the widow's city, 
to the steamer by a jinrikisha, — a minia- 
ture gig, or it may be called a great baby- 
carriage, having steel springs, two large, 
slender wheels, and a movable paper hood ; 
the whole being so evenly poised when the 
passenger is seated that the man who runs 
between the shafts has no weight to support. 
At the wharf a crowd of people were waiting 
to give the newly married twain a noisy 
send-off, and as the ship swung out into the 
Woosung River she was saluted by the run- 
ning explosions of fire-crackers, whirligigs, 



206 SEVEN DAYS IN A JINRIKISHA 

and fuses hanging from bamboo poles. In 
the smoke and din of this honeymoon re- 
joicing I said good-bye to China. 

On the morning of the third day at sea 
Japan was in sight ; the gale had blown out ; 
the sun was shining, and our ship was thread- 
ing her way through quiet waters, between 
green islands, and under cliffs covered with 
verdure. After calling at Nagasaki she 
steamed up the coast, and at daylight of 
next morning anchored in the Straits of Shi- 
monisaki. A cargo of rice in straw pack- 
ages was brought to the ship in scows, and, 
having taken it aboard, she passed through 
the Inland Sea, and anchored on the next 
morning before the city of Hiogo. Thence 
she pursued her voyage to Yokohama with- 
out me ; for I was to make the journey to 
that city in jinrikishas over the highway 
called the Tokaido. 

The Tokaido is a broad macadamized road, 
extending along the southern shore of the 
island of Niphon from Shimonisaki to the 
city of Tokio. It was probably built centu- 
ries ago, is shaded by large and ancient 
cedar trees, skirts the seashore, traverses 
mountains, crosses rivers on stone bridges, 



SEVEN DAYS IN A JINRIKISHA 207 

and passes through many populous towns 
and small villages, which afford such accom- 
modations to travelers as Japanese customs 
demand. As no foreigner was allowed to 
make this overland journey except by per- 
mission of the government, I obtained, from 
the Japanese foreign office, passports to 
travel under these conditions : to obey all 
the police regulations of the country, not to 
engage in trade, not to commit matrimony 
nor any disturbance, nor to be longer on the 
way than forty days, and to return my pass- 
ports on reaching Yokohama. 

Some of the preparations for this journey 
of 350 miles, which would occupy seven 
days, were made at Hiogo, although the 
start was to be taken at Kiyoto, a large city 
fifty miles east of it, and connected with it 
by a railroad which ended there. As my 
party, which numbered three travelers, was 
not likely to find in the hostelries on the 
road such food as would be palatable accord- 
ing to our Anglo-Saxon education, I bought 
canned soups and meats, crackers, pickles, 
cheese, butter, sugar, pepper, salt, tumblers, 
plates, spoons, knives, forks, two round 
loaves of wheat bread, each about two feet 



2o8 SEVEN DAYS IX A JINRIKISHA 

in diameter and a foot thick, and a few 
pounds of China tea. 

I engaged a guide and interpreter to go 
with us. He was one of those modernized 
young men, sprouts of " New Japan," who 
have discarded the graceful native costumes 
for unsuitable European clothes. He had a 
faint moustache, a red cravat, patent-leather 
shoes, a switch cane, and a cigar-case. As 
the man and his belongings were an offense 
to my idea of the eternal fitness of things, I 
soon found a reason for dismissing him. In 
his place I took a natural Jap, at the price of 
one yen a day, and his return expenses to be 
paid back to Kiyoto. He wore Japanese 
clothes, and knew his proper place in the 
traveling train. He said he was a cook. 
Experience with him on the journey showed 
that he knew how to boil water and to make 
a pot of tea. He said he could speak Eng- 
lish ; which was " Yes, master," and " No, 
master," and a few other words, uttered with 
an articulation not easily understood by me. 

After these preparations for the journey 
had been made, we took the railway train to 
Kiyoto, where, on showing our passports to 
the gateman at the station, we were allowed 



SEVEN DAYS IN A JINRIKISHA 209 

to pass into the city. Here we were at once 
saluted by the cries of jinrikisha-men, each 
man ej^pressing by gesticulations and a few 
English words an eagerness to carry us with 
our baggage and stores wherever we desired 
to go. Though noisy and alert for a trade, 
they were respectful to us and to each other. 
They loaded our stores and baggage into jin- 
rikishas, while we got into others, and were 
then whirled rapidly away. A half-hour's 
ride through streets as clean as a garden 
walk, in which there is never a horse or a 
beast of burden to be seen, brought us to the 
Maruyama Hotel, a house on a hillside, over- 
looking the city, and kept by a Jap in the 
English style of hotel-keeping, as he compre- 
hended it. 

Our jinrikishas left us at the foot of the 
hill. We clambered up a paved walk, and 
entered the court-yard. A bright Japanese 
boy came at once to the open door, and said, 
" Good morning, gentlemans ! You wants a 
room.? — eh.?" This was Matty, master of 
ceremonies, guide, interpreter, philosopher, 
and friend to the stranger who comes within 
the gates of the Maruyama. He was the 
handy go-between, connecting the guests of 



2IO SEVEN DAYS IN A yiNRIKISHA 

the house and the host, who was as ignorant 
of our language as we were of his, the igno- 
rance of each being a profit to Matty. On a 
table in the public room I found a small book 
containing names and notes written by trav- 
elers who had tarried at the hotel. I noticed 
under one of the names this warning : *' Look 
out for the Japanese boy that speaks Eng- 
lish ! " This was a warning of which Matty 
was ignorant because he could not read it. 
So we looked out for him while he looked 
out for us. 

As the house was empty of guests, we had 
a free choice of its accommodations. The 
sleeping-rooms, which were plainly furnished 
with American bedsteads and beds, opened 
by paper-covered sliding doors upon a bal- 
cony high above ground, and commanded a 
view of the valley in which Kiyoto is situ- 
ated. From the balcony we could look down 
over the black-tiled roofs of houses and tem- 
ples, over gardens and parks, and the crowded 
streets of this most interesting and pictu- 
resque city of Japan. 

We now engaged jinrikishas and coolies 
for the overland journey. We required four 
vehicles for ourselves and the guide, with 



S£ VEN DA YS IN A JINRIKISHA 2 1 1 

two for the baggage and provisions. Two 
men are to draw each jinrikisha, one by the 
shafts and the other running ahead, in tan- 
dem style, harnessed to the carriage by a 
cord which is knotted to the shafts, and 
passes over his shoulder like a collar. The 
price to be paid for each man, including his 
jinrikisha, is seven sen a ri. A ri is about 
two and a half miles. The men wanted ten 
sen ; but I have learned not to pay for any- 
thing the price asked ; for the fundamental 
principle of trade in Asiatic countries is ex- 
pressed in the old maxim : Let the buyer 
look out for himself. Besides, seven sen a ri 
was the price paid for jinrikishas running on 
the mail-service. A sen is a hundredth part 
of a Japanese yen, or paper dollar. The cost 
of a paper dollar purchased with drafts on 
London was about seventy cents. At this 
rate each of our jinrikisha men-horses re- 
ceived the value of less than a dollar in gold 
per day. He furnished the carriage, har- 
nessed, stabled, grained, and groomed him- 
self, and was entirely satisfied with the 
compensation. 

When these men start upon a journey 
with jinrikishas, their dress usually consists 



212 SEVEN DAYS IN A JINRIKISHA 

of a white cloth passed between the legs and 
wound tight around the waist ; a blue cotton 
shirt, and under it a cotton chest-protector 
hanging from the neck, and held in its place 
by a strap buttoning on the back ; sometimes 
a blue and white handkerchief is bound in a 
twist around the head. Sometimes they 
wear blue cotton trousers, and sometimes 
none at all. The feet are bare, or shod with 
sandals made of rice straw. As the men 
become warm by running, this clothing 
is drawn off, piece by piece, until there is 
nothing left upon the body but the waist 
cloth. Those who run with the jinrikishas 
are of all ages. The forms of some of them 
are tall, erect, pliant, and well proportioned. 
The forms of others are ugly, the muscles of 
their arms and legs being developed in great 
protuberances, and their bodies marked with 
the scars of eruptive sores which, it is said, 
this running and hauling labor causes. They 
have no intemperate habits. They stop fre- 
quently on the way at " tea-houses " to eat 
rice and tea, always kept ready in lacquered 
pails for service. At night they wrap them- 
selves in a blanket, which is carried under 
the jinrikisha seat, with an oiled cloak, and 



SEVEN DAYS IN A JINRIKISHA 213 

go to sleep upon the floor. While at their 
work, they show the cheerful disposition 
which is natural to the race. There is no 
envious rivalry among those who are travel- 
ing in the same train ; but as they run they 
chat with each other and bandy compliments. 
They yield the lead of the train to that one 
of their companions who first takes it, and 
never press him to go faster in order to com- 
pel him to keep the place. Indeed they 
appear to be versed in all " the small sweet 
courtesies of life." 

At eight o'clock in the morning of a bright 
April day we began to load our luggage, our 
stores, and ourselves into six jinrikishas, 
bound for Yokohama. Some of these vehi- 
cles were more roomy than others ; and it 
was a question which each traveler had to 
decide for himself, whether it will be more 
comfortable to ride fifty miles to-day in this 
jinrikisha or in that one. Then all the lug- 
gage was sorted, packages were condensed, 
and the whole was stowed, unstowed, and 
stowed again, in order that the load might 
balance, so that no weight should fall upon 
the man in the shafts. At last the confu- 
sion incident to the beginning of such a jour- 



214 SEVEN DAYS IN A JINRIKISHA 

ney was ended. Each one of us was seated 
in his jinrikisha, the runners stood in the 
shafts, the leaders in the leading cords, and 
I gave the signal to start. 

" Sayonara ! " — Farewell — we shouted 
to those we were leaving ; and, turning our 
backs on Matty, who ran after us with a 
package of salt belonging to our stores, as if 
he would sprinkle the tail of our caravan in 
the expectation of catching us again, we 
trotted down the hill in a single line, and 
passing at a good pace through the streets 
of Kiyoto, we were soon rolling over the 
great public highway, the old thoroughfare 
of ancient Japan, — the Tokaido. It is 
thronged with Japanese travelers going in 
opposite directions ; men and women, some 
of them with babies strapped upon their 
backs ; little babies looking at the busy 
world over their mothers' shoulders. Some 
travelers are riding in jinrikishas, but the 
multitude are on foot ; some are carrying a 
bamboo staff, a parcel tied up in a blue cot- 
ton cloth, and the ever-present umbrella, 
with which they shade their heads from the 
sun. No one wears a hat, and as for bon- 
nets or milliner's head-dresses, no place 



SEVEN DAYS IN A JINRTKISHA 215 

could be found for such a thing upon the 
head of any woman bom in Japan. 

Not a horse, nor a cow, nor any beast of 
burden was to be seen on the Tokaido. We 
met post-runners and messengers with dis- 
patches striding along the road, carrying 
their packet of letters or pfapers tied to the 
end of a long bamboo stick which rested on 
their shoulders. We met bare-legged men 
trundling barrows ; others carrying baskets 
filled with fresh clover, flowering plants, or- 
anges, sweet potatoes, radishes, fish, billets 
of wood, straw-bound packages of rice, char- 
coal, and various wares intended for the city 
market. Others, grunting a guttural chant 
which sounded like the words, " Heave-o- 
lugga ! Heave- o - lugga ! " to which they 
walked in a slow step, were toiling along 
with boxes and casks of merchandise, sus- 
pended in rope slings from large bamboo 
sticks supported on their shoulders. An 
hour's run of seven miles brought us to the 
town of Otsu, at the foot of Lake Bewa, 
where we rested. All the way we met a con- 
tinuous stream of travelers thronging the 
Tokaido. And so, during each day of the 
journey, we were in company with detach- 



2i6 SEVEN DAYS IN A JINRIKISHA 

ments of the itinerant multitude going east 
and going west, a bright panorama of active 
life which ajDpeared to have no end. At 
night we pulled up at a yadoya, or public 
inn, where our guide was allowed to cook 
our meals on the public braziers over a fire 
of charcoal, and we were permitted to make 
ourselves at home, as if we were the lords of 
the manor. Here we slept in our own blan- 
kets in rooms floored with straw mats, and 
walled by sliding paper sashes, and lighted 
by a shaded oil lamp. Sometimes the sashes 
were gently moved aside, and a young Jap- 
anese face peeped in ; for we were objects of 
curiosity to the inmates of the house as much 
as they were to us. 

Every town has its jinrikishas and jin- 
rikisha men, for hire. Our first jinrikisha 
team ran a distance of one hundred miles, in 
the first two days of the journey, between 
the hours of eight in the morning and six 
in the evening, stopping frequently on the 
road. At the end of the second day the 
men appeared to be as fresh as when they 
started from Kiyoto. Some of them would 
go no farther, being desirous to return home ; 
others wanted to go through to Yokohama. 



SEVEN DAYS IN A JINRIKISHA 217 

On account of disagreements I found it 
advantageous to change men and carriages 
every day, hiring those belonging to the dis- 
trict in which we were travehng. On the 
fifth day of our journey, the men drew us 
sixty-four miles, without showing any fa- 
tigue, and on one stage of this day's journey 
they traveled eight miles in an hour. It 
was a bright, cool day ; I noticed that wheat 
in the fields was headed, clover was tall, and 
azaleas were in bloom. I noticed also many 
square lots of fallow earth, covered with shal- 
low water and studded with rice stubble. 
There were many plantations of tea on the 
roadsides, in which men and women were at 
work. Arrived at Yeshiri, after sunset, we 
found the public inns full of noisy travelers ; 
so we rode to the headquarters of the police, 
and showing our passports, we requested to 
be furnished with lodgings for the night. 
An officer was detailed, who conducted us to 
the house of a private family, which gave for 
our use their second floor, the attic, consist- 
ing of one large room. Here our beds were 
made on the floor; our supper, cooked by 
the assistance of the family down-stairs, was 
spread on small lacquered tables ; and the 



2i8 SEVEN DAYS IN A JINRIKISHA 

dark-eyed daughters of the house came up- 
stairs and sat on the floor beside us, smiling 
to see the foreigners eat bread and butter. 

The villages through which the Tokaido 
runs keep the highway clean and free from 
obstructions. I consider this hard, smooth, 
dustless highway to be an indication of a 
high state of civilization in Japan. On each 
side of it, telegraph wires are supported by 
neat tripod poles, on which are painted the 
numbers in both Japanese and Arabic fig- 
ures. Day after day, as we traveled, I no- 
ticed that the out-door occupations of the 
people were drying fish, drying teas, sowing 
rice, bleaching laces, spinning and weaving 
cloths ; and I saw them in every village dye- 
ing blue cottons, which are universally worn, 
and stretching the cloth on frames to be 
dried by their house-doors. 

At one point of our journey we abandoned 
the jinrikishas, and took a large sail-boat to 
cross the wide ferry at Arai. The wind was 
light, the tide was against us, and we arrived 
at the further side after dark. No jinriki- 
shas were waiting for us. I stood on the 
beach, shouting for them long and loud. At 
last the cry reached the sleepy ear of the 



. SEVEN DAYS IN A JINRIKISHA 219 

little village ; and jinrikisha men rallied to 
meet us. That night we rode until nine 
o'clock, with paper lanterns hanging on our 
shafts, according to law. The next after- 
noon we again abandoned the jinrikishas to 
cross a mountain on foot, the road being too 
steep for vehicles. Reaching Mishima, we 
exchanged jinrikishas for kagas. These are 
open baskets, suspended from poles rest- 
ing on the shoulders of men ; and in these 
our train was carried up the precipitous 
mountains of Hakone. It was long after 
dark when we arrived at the inn by Hakone 
Lake ; our arrival being in the shape of a 
triumphant procession, in which flaming 
bamboo torches were carried by men walking 
on each side of the kagas to light the way. 
The next afternoon, after descending the 
other side of the mountains, we resumed 
jinrikishas, and, as we approached Yoko- 
hama from Odawara, where we slept on the 
seventh day of our journey, we met horses 
on the road, and English-built vehicles, and 
persons in European dress, and many indi- 
cations of our approach to those foreign 
influences which are destroying picturesque 
Japan. 



COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY. 

By WILLIAM ROOT BLISS. 
Crown 8vo, gilt top, illustrated. Price, %i.£0. 



The Second Edition, enlarged by new and 
interesting matter. This book is readable from 




'^^5-^' 



beginning to end. Its vivid pictures of home- 
spun life and manners in the Plymouth Colony 
are drawn by a skillful hand. The shores of Buz- 
zard's Bay are repeopled with colonial farmers 
and fishermen, parsons and justices of His Ma- 
jesty's peace, church gossips and penitent sin- 
ners ; their manuscripts are quoted, their account- 
books are examined ; the reader can see how they 
lived and acted, and can survey them as they 
surveyed themselves. 

Ptihlished by 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 

4 Park St., Boston ; ii E. 17TH St., New York; 
28 Lakeside Building, Chicago. 



Extracts from Letters Received. 

. . . Last summer I was fortunate enough to strike your 
" Colonial Times on Buzzard's Bay." It has ever since been 
my intention to write to you to express my keen appreciation 
of the book, which has in it more of the salt sea flavor of 
Cape Cod soil, combined with a more sympathetic appreci- 
ation of the humors and individuality of Colonial New Eng- 
land life, than any other of the innumerable and inconceiv- 
ably prosaic attempts that I have met with. 

Quincy, Mass. CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 

... I have read your " Colonial Times on Buzzard's 
Bay " with care, and I thank you most sincerely for the ser- 
vice you have done to that corner of the Old Colony. I am 
impressed again with the charm of the story as you have 
painted it, and with the faithfulness of your expression of 
the characteristics of the region as I knew it. I am very 
glad of every enlargement which I find in this new edition ; 
I know no book of the kind which is so well done. 

P'ranklin B. Dexter. 

Yale College, New Haven, Conn. 

. . . You have made a success in your " Colonial Times 
on Buzzard's Bay." Your eye for the facts and your touch 
in description are so rare that the picture, as you leave it, 
is quite perfect, — an unspoiled photograph of the real 
scenes and people. Such books are not often made, and 
their value to the scholar and interest to readers will grow 
as time passes. 

Washington, D. C. EDWARD C. ToWNE. 

... I have just read your " Colonial Times on Buzzard's 
Bay," and want to thank you for the pleasure it has given 
me. I read it with avidity ; it held me fast until I had 
finished it. It is the manner in which the small affairs 
of our New England towns are presented that makes them 
engaging or dry as dust. You have hit the manner and 
method. 

Newcastle, New Hampshire. JOHN Albee. 

... I have seldom read a book with more interest than 
your "Colonial Times on Buzzard's Bay ; " although I am 
grieved to find that one of my own name should have fur- 
nished one of the few instances of profanity that marred the 
Wareham records, and that another had his ears rubbed, 
with other indignities, at the hands of one Bourn. I make 
my regular pilgrimages to the shores of Buzzard's Bay, and 
shall always be grateful for your book at such times. 

1st Lieutenant ^th U.S. Cavalry, Eben Swift. 

fort Reno, Indian Territory. 



... I picked up on the library table of the club, this 
evening, your delightful book, " Colonial Times on Buz- 
zard's Bay ; " and I wish to tell you how much I have en- 
joyed reading it. It seems as if, as a boy, in Woodstock, 
Connecticut, I have talked to the very people you describe 
in your book. Clarence W. Bowen. 

The Hamilton Club, Brooklyn, iVew York. 

. . . I have read your "Colonial Times on Buzzard's Bay" 
with very great interest. There is a quaint old-world flavor 
about it which to me is most pleasant and agreeable, and 
I am very glad to have it in my library. 

T/ie Manse, Bedford, England. John Brown. 



§ 



Extracts from Notices in the Press. 

From the New York Evening Post. 

It is a vividly told description of life in southern Massa- 
chusetts. Its tale of the simple doings of a New England 
hamlet in the last century will seem commonplace enough 
to those unchanging old Yankee farmers, and they will 
receive it with the tolerant but superior smile which they 
accord to the vagaries of the city seeker for spinning-wheels 
and old brass candlesticks. But for the summer sojourner 
there is a delightful charm about Mr. Bliss's animated nar- 
rative of the olden time which amply accounts for the poou- 
larity which is being accorded to it. 

From the Boston Daily Transcript. 

It is a series of most charming pictures of old-time life, a 
New England idyl and poem in prose. It has not a dull 
page, is full of vivacity, and the style is chaste and schol- 
arly. The south shore of Buzzard's Bay, in general, is well 
known to summer tourists. They will find no more charm- 
ing book than this of their favorite haunts. 

Prom the Boston Traveller. 

No more charming volume has been recently published 
than " Colonial Times on Buzzard's Bay." Mr. Bliss has 
used the old records, to which he had access, with a rare 
skill. He has clothed these skeleton statements with flesh 
and made them instinct with life and spirit. No more de- 
lightful picture of old-time New England life has yet been 
drawn, and the chapters are gems in the way of description 
and vivid suggestion. 



F>-om the Boston Daily Advertiser. 

Mr. Bliss is a zealous antiquary who has a considerable 
literary gift, and consequently his picture is both accurate 
and charming. The life it reveals, however, is not charm- 
ing. Its best characteristics were shrewdness and thrift. 
It is impossible not to smile over the evidence to these 
qualities contained in the charge to a hired man for time 
lost on account of "fever and ago, four fites one week and 
three the next." 

From the Boston Herald. 

No person can feel that he really knows early New Eng- 
land life who has not read this work. Its preparation has 
engrossed the leisure hours of the author for many years, 
and he gives almost sacred character to a portion of the 
New England coast, which has now become attractive to 
summer residents from all parts of the country. 

From the New York Journal of Co7n7nerce. 

Mr. Bliss here proves that the story of a town in the 
hands of a competent delineator like himself is well worth 
telling. The languid novel-reader will find more in the 
pages of this volume to entertain him than in many a much 
praised work of professed fiction. " The Town's Meeting 
House," " The Town's Minister," " The Town's School- 
master," " Town Life in the Revolution," " The Town's 
Bass-viol," and " Final Transformations," are far pleasanter 
in the perusal than some chapters of romance which has a 
large sale. 

From the New York Mail and Express. 

Mr, Bliss's work differs from the majority of books based 
upon colonial manuscripts in that it has, besides its anti- 
quarian interest, a distinct literary character, and that lifelike 
quality which results from the author's complete absorption 
of the characteristics of the times concerning which he 
writes. His book reflects the talk, the manners, and the 
spirit of those days, and gives what is probably as faithful 
a picture of life in any one of the New England colonies as 
in that of Plymouth. It forms one of the most entertain- 
ing contributions to our colonial history. 

From the Brooklyn (N. Y.) Times. 

Colonial times are not so very many years behind us, yet 
this reproduction by Mr. Bliss of the social life of our ances- 
tors reads like the tale of another people in the far-distant 
past. Frequent quotations from the old records make the 
picture almost photographic in its details. 



From the Chicago Tribune. 

Besides being a capital presentation of the way our sturdy 
ancestors of colonial days lived, acted, thought, behaved, and 
misbehaved, the book is replete with valuable historical 
information of special interest to certain well-known fami- 
lies like the Thachers and Fearings, and to the general 
reading public. The work is bright, well-written, and 
wholesome, and will be particularly enjoyed by all who have 
chanced to pass a summer at or near Buzzard's Bay. 

From the Newark (iV. /.) Daily Advertiser. 

Mr. Bliss has reconstructed a vivid and undeniably truth- 
ful picture of colonial life. He has followed the quaint 
language and unique orthography of the colonists. But his 
own narrative is judiciously mingled with these citations. 
The result is a most agreeable book, whose principal charm 
is picturesqueness of detail and a historical accuracy so 
obvious and vivid that a skillful novelist might here find 
ample materials for the background and mise en scene of a 
novel, whose characters should be of the colonists of Buz- 
zard's Bay. 

Prom the Utica {N. Y.) Morning Herald. 

The reader is taken into the heart of the families, the 
bar-room of the tavern, the assemblies at the town meetings, 
the husking bees and paring bees, and is made to see the 
people in their daily walk and conversation. When the 
book is closed, after the enjoyment of perusal, the reader 
feels intimately acquainted with the whole circle who lived 
in "Colonial Times on Buzzard's Bay." As a chapter of 
history, as a^ portraiture of scenery and character, it is a 
literary gem. 

From the Tit usville {Pa.) Morning Herald. 

The writer, Mr. William Root Bliss, throws the glow of 
romance around crabbed records by the charms of a poetic 
style, by the genial sympathy of a true antiquarian. 

Prom the Independent, New York. 

The volume is one of very great merit, and its reading is 
none the less enjoyable for the humor that lends a quiet 
glow to the author's style, or breaks in occasionally upon 
his sober passages. The love which guides his pen is un- 
affected and strong enough to warm his pages, but it has the 
earthly quality of Keats's verse, and depends for its charm 
on the simple fascination of a natural presentation. Mr. 
Bliss is no censor, and certainly no satirist. His pages are 
bright, sympathetic, and rich in humorous examples, for 
proof of which we must commend our readers to them. 



From the Christian at Work^ New York. 

A complete and most interesting picture of the old colo- 
nial times in that section of the Plymouth Colony lying on 
the shores of Buzzard's Bay. So vividly, and with such 
graphic force, have these times been reproduced in these 
pages, that we seem to be living them over ourselves. To 
say that it is an interesting book is to say but little, — it is 
a charming one. 

From the Christian Union, New York. 

Mr. Bliss sketches with a firm hand a picture of old- 
fashioned life, character, and society as they were formerly 
to be found on the shores of Buzzard's Bay. He has con- 
ceived and illustrated it with real literary insight and felicity. 
He has used his materials with such skill and infused so 
much humor and human interest into his work as to give 
his narrative much of the charm of a story, so that it be- 
comes in a sense the romance of the life of an old town. 

From the Congregationalist, Boston. 

We have enjoyed " Colonial Times on Buzzard's Bay," 
very much. It contains many quaint and amusing facts, 
and is written picturesquely. It is pervaded by the flavor 
of antiquity in an unusual degree, without being at all dull. 

From the Churchman, New York. 

It is well done and is full of the interest which attaches 
to a life long since entirely passed away. Mr. Bliss has 
evidently taken great delight in his work, and his success 
approves his pains. 

From the New York Evangelist . 

It is a lovely picture of a quaint and individual people. 
The discipline of Abigail Muxom for " talking and joaking 
like young people " with a man not her husband, shows up 
in contrast to the society newspapers of to-day about as 
sharply as does the beating of the town drum by the sexton 
to call the people to church, with the recent contention as 
to the silencing of church bells. Altogether it is a charm- 
ing book. 

From the New Englaftder. 

The writer of this book has been so successful in what 
he has attempted that even those who have never seen the 
picturesque scenes which he describes — the fine wood- 
lands "with soft brown silence carpeted," the rivers and 
ponds, the sedgy field brooks — will read these daintily 
printed pages with interest, and learn to share with the 
author some of the feelings which have given him inspira- 
tion. 



From the London Times, 

" Colonial Times on Buzzard's Bay " shows how slightly 
the habits of these simple and strait-laced communities 
have changed in the course of a couple of centuries. Like 
Dr. Jessop's reconstruction of mediaeval society in our own 
eastern counties, it is founded entirely on contemporary 
records, kept and preserved with great care. 

From the Atlantic Alonthly. 

" Colonial Times on Buzzard's Bay," by William Root 
Bliss. The appearance of a second edition of this book 
gives us another opportunity to commend the painstaking 
and affectionate labor which has taken material somewhat 
scorned by the historian, or used only with unpalatable dry- 
ness, and has constructed a most readable account of a cor- 
ner of New England. The new chapters on The Squire, 
and Impressments for the King, are distinct additions, and 
of a piece with the rest of the book. 



This book is for sale by booksellers, and 
will be sent to any address, postpaid, 
by the publishers, on receipt of the price 





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